"Everything that lives dies;
everything that dies rots;
it all leads back to compost."
-can't remember where it came from

The kiss of the sun for pardon
The song of the birds for mirth
One is nearer to God's heart in the garden
Than anywhere else on earth
-Dorothy Gurney
1858 - 1932

Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing:--"Oh, how beautiful!" and sitting in the shade,
While better men than we go out and start their working lives
At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner-knives

from "The Glory of the Garden"
Rudyard Kipling

"If, at the end of the day, you do not have dirty knees, you need to seriously re-evaluate your priorities."
-Calvin (of Calvin & Hobbes)

"The gardener is usually dead, of course." Hahaha, love that quote ... gardening to the end!

One of my favorite quotes for gardening and for living was on a plaque I saw in a photo of a Mexico City garden. I had it made into a little plaque for my yard.

"Grace without perfection is more to be desired
than perfection without grace."

Another favorite quote that I have in the house is:

"Sometimes when I've been in the garden I've looked up through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being happy as if something were pushing and drawing and making me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of Magic; leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden--in all the places." ~Frances Hodgson Burnett, author if "The Secret Garden" and other novels for children.

Love your quotes too Sylvia. I think this thread should be on the main page.

The Earth smiles through flowers

Tally HO!

Oh Yeah, I have this one on my bathroom wall: "Garden, there's magic in the dirt." Roselee, your quote about magic made me remember that one.

I was visiting a gardening friend in Denton one day and she had one on her bathroom wall that I thought was memorable: "Laugh, and no one will notice. Cry and no one will hear it. But just let one tiny little fart..."

Yeah, I know it's not about gardening but it IS funny.

Cheryl

Cheryl, one of my favorites that I just shared with Roselee the other day is this:

Who plants a seed
Beneath the sod
Then waits to see
Believes in God.

patty

Though I am an old man, I am but a young gardener.
Thomas Jefferson

found these on another site:

Plant carrots in January and you'll never have to eat carrots.
Author Unknown

How fair is a garden amid the trials and passions of existence.
Benjamin Disraeli

The garden is the poor man's apothecary.
German Proverb

I never had any other desire so strong, and so like to covetousness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be master at last of a small house and a large Garden.
Abraham Cowley, The Garden, 1666

I have never had so many good ideas day after day as when I worked in the garden.
John Erskine

When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it.
If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant.
Author Unknown

Those are all good Sylvia! I had to laugh out loud at the last one.

I came across this bit of writing today. I had to read it a couple of times to get the essence of it, and then I really appreciated its words:

~ ~ ~

You get down on your knees in the dark earth-Âalone
for hours in hot sun, yanking weed roots, staking trellises,
burning your shoulders, swatting gnats; you strain your muscled mid-western neck and back, callous your pianistÂs hands.

You cut roses back so they wonÂt fruit, rip out and replace
spent annuals. You fill your garden dense with roots and vines.

And when a humble sprout climbs like a worm up out of death, you are there to bless it, in your green patch, all spring and summer long, hose like a scepter, a reliquary vessel; you hum through the dreamy wilderness-Âno one to judge, absolve, or be absolved;-Âpurified by labor, confessed by its whisperings, connected to its innocence.

So when you heft a woody, brushy tangle, or stumble inside grimy, spent by earth, I see all the sacraments in placeÂand the redeemed world never smelled so sweet.

~ Ken Weisner, from Anything on Earth. © Hummingbird Press, 2010.

Not exactly a garden quote, but here's another little piece of prose I came across. It's sort of about relaxing about however our garden is, and appreciating and accepting things as they are. It's a nice one for a rainy day like today ...

WHAT'S LEFT

I used to wait for the flowers,
my pleasure reposed on them.
Now I like plants before they get to the blossom.
Leafy ones  foxgloves, comfrey, delphiniums Â
fleshy tiers of strong leaves pushing up
into air grown daily lighter and more sheened
with bright dust like the eyeshadow
that tall young woman in the bookshop wears,
its shimmer and crumble on her white lids.

The washing sways on the line, the sparrows pull
at the heaps of drying weeds that IÂve left around.
Perhaps this is middle age. Untidy, unfinished,
knowing thereÂll never be time now to finish,
liking the plants  their strong lives Â
not caring about flowers, sitting in weeds
to write things down, look at things,
watching the sway of shirts on the line,
the cloth filtering light.

I know more or less
how to live through my life now.
But I want to know how to live whatÂs left
with my eyes open and my hands open;
I want to stand at the door in the rain
listening, sniffing, gaping.
Peaceful and joyous,
just a simple person before God.

~ Kerrie Hardie ~