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

One golden day redeems a weary year

Like the musician, the painter, the poet and the rest, the true lover of flowers is born, not made.

This very act of planting a seed in the earth has in it to me something beautiful. I always do it with a joy that is largely mixed with awe.

It seems to me the worst of all the plagues is the slug, the snail without a shell. He is beyond description repulsive, a mass of sooty, shapeless slime, and he devours everything.

To stand by the beds at sunrise and see the flowers awake is a heavenly delight.

Oh, I never meant, in my old age, to become subject to the thrall of a love like this; it is almost dreadful, so absorbing, so stirring down to the deeps. For the tiny creature is so old and wise and sweet, and so fascinating in his sturdy common sense and clear intelligence; and his affection for me is a wonderful, exquisite thing, the sweetest flower that has bloomed for me in all my life through.