If one is the kind of creature I am and wants to do the kind of writing I want to do, an undisturbed bourgeois existence with no distractions seems in order. A single meeting outside the family upsets one's whole inner web, makes one start off on two-days' thinking and weighing, destroys a delicate balance etc. etc. ... I now have enough friends to last me a lifetime and that is enough. I am going to close the doors and hibernate at least for a couple of years. I am frightfully depressed about my work. It seems to me perfectly mediocre.

Gardening is one of the rewards of middle age, when one is ready for an impersonal passion, a passion that demands patience, acute awareness of a world outside oneself, and the power to keep on growing through all the times of drought, through the cold snows, towards those moments of pure joy when all failures are forgotten and the plum tree flowers.

True gardeners cannot bear a glove Between the sure touch and the tender root.

You will always be here with me; As long as I live, A towering figure of love.

Flowers and plants are silent presences. They nourish every sense except the ear.

The garden is growth and change and that means loss as well as constant new treasures to make up for a few disasters.

There is only one real deprivation... and that is not to be able to give one's gifts to those one loves most.