The farmer and the gardener are both busy, the gardener perhaps the more excitable of the two, for he is more of the amateur, concerned with the creation of beauty rather than with the providing of food. Gardening is a luxury occupation; an ornament, not a necessity, of life.
Vita Sackville-WestSee the last orange roses, how they blow / Deeper and heavier than in their prime, / In one defiant flame before they go.
Vita Sackville-WestI loved you when love was Spring, and May, Loved you when summer deepened into June, and now when autumn yellows all the leaves.
Vita Sackville-WestA flowerless room is a soulless room, to my way of thinking; but even a solitary little vase of a living flower may redeem it.
Vita Sackville-WestIt is a sad moment when the first phlox appears. It is the amber light indicating the end of the great burst of early summer and suggesting that we must now start looking forward to autumn. Not that I have any objection to autumn as a season, full of its own beauty; but I just cannot bear to see another summer go, and I recoil from what the first hint of autumn means.
Vita Sackville-West