[Petunias are] as hopelessly impractical as a chiffon ball dress.

[Petunias are] as hopelessly impractical as a chiffon ball dress.

Americans resent the vagaries of weather to a degree unknown to other peoples. ... Weather is a force we have lost touch with. We feel entitled to dominate it, like everything else in the environment, and when we can't are more panic-stricken than primitives who know that when nature is out of control they can only pray to the gods.

A garden is a private world or it is nothing.

Sooner or later every gardener must face the fact that certain things are going to die on him. It is a temptation to be anthropomorphic about plants, to suspect that they do it to annoy.

Or perhaps you notice a congregation of ladybugs on a rose stalk. Don't invoke the old nursery saying and ask them to fly away home. Their house is not on fire. Your roses are, with aphids, which the ladybugs are feeding on - and you can bless yourself that they have come to your rescue.

To garden is to let optimism get the better of judgment.