Flowers and plants are silent presences. They nourish every sense except the ear.
When we admit our vulnerability, we include others. If we deny it, we shut them out.
Don’t forget that compared to a grownup person every baby is a genius.
The ambience here is order and beauty. That is what frightens me when I am first alone again. I feel inadequate. I have made an open place, a place for meditation. What if I cannot find myself inside it?
Your poems will happen when no one is there.
Public education was not founded to give society what it wants. Quite the opposite.
The more articulate one is, the more dangerous words become.
Gardening is an instrument of grace.
I long for the bulbs to arrive, for the early autumn chores are melancholy, but the planting of bulbs is the work of hope and is always thrilling.
Most people have to talk so they won’t hear.
A house that does not have one warm, comfy chair in it is soulless.
One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.
We cannot afford not to fight for growth and understanding, even when it is painful, as it is bound to be.
I am not a greedy person except about flowers and plants, and then I become fanatically greedy.
It always comes back to the same necessity: go deep enough and there is a bedrock of truth, however hard.
A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself.
At some point I believe one has to stop holding back for fear of alienating some imaginary reader or real relative or friend, and come out with personal truth.
Gardening gives one back a sense of proportion about everything – except itself.
Don’t forget that compared to a grownup person every baby is a genius. Think of the capacity to learn! The freshness, the temperament, the will of a baby a few months old!
Whatever peace I know rests in the natural world, in feeling myself a part of it, even in a small way.