I thought I had finished with romantic adventures, but half-way through life and well past the age for losing one's heart, I was suddenly swept off my feet by a new love, a passionate, tyrannical, all-absorbing emotion: the love of a garden.

much of gardening is a struggle against the fecundity of Nature.

Every noble achievement is a dream before it is a reality just as the oak is an acorn before it is a tree.

In looking back we remember only the triumphant consummations of each season. Failures and frustrations are forgotten; garden-memories are as perfect as garden-hopes.

The trees change their voices in autumn as well as their shapes. No longer do they whisper to one another in muffled tones as they did in summer; they talk in a different leaf-language now. The wind moves through the boughs like fingers drawn across the strings of a harp filling the air with the harsh dry sound of sapless leaves. It is the main theme of the autumn music, this murmuring counterpoint of dead leaves.

I thought I had finished with romantic adventures, but half-way through life and well past the age for losing one's heart, I was suddenly swept off my feet by a new love, a passionate, tyrannical, all-absorbing emotion: the love of a garden.

New words are always being born and old ones fading away.