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

Forget the times of trouble, but not the truths they taught. Forget the days of sorrow, but not the strength they brought. Forget the storms you battled through beneath a heavy load - but not the light that led you safely down the unknown road.

While it is February one can taste the full joys of anticipation. Spring stands at the gate with her finger on the latch.

in February there is everything to hope for and nothing to regret.

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.

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.

Life is like a field, where we must gather what we grow, weed or wheat... this is the law, we reap the crop we sow.