The toad has indeed no superior as a destroyer of noxious insects, and he possesses no bad habits and is entirely inoffensive himself, every owner of a garden should treat him with utmost hospitality.

Like the musician, the painter, the poet, and the rest, the true lover of flowers is born, not made. And he is born to happiness in this vale of tears, to a certain amount of the purest joy that earth can giver her children, joy that is tranquil, innocent, uplifting, unfailing.

If death were the exception and not the rule, and we were not so swiftly to follow, these separations would be intolerably sad. We know no more of our next change of life than we knew of this before we were born into it; but that which we call death is merely change, who can doubt?

One golden day redeems a weary year

When in these fresh mornings I go into my garden before any one is awake, I go for the time being into perfect happiness.

I am fully and intensely aware that plants are conscious of love and respond to it as they do to nothing else.

O happy, happy morning! O dear, familiar place! / O warm, sweet tears of Heaven, fast falling on my face! / O well-remembered, rainy wind, blow all my care away, / That I may be a child again this blissful morn of May.