....the ancient ritual of the earth; ploughing and planting, reaping and threshing. The fundamental business remains unaltered; it is only the methods and tools that science is changing.

Winter sunshine is a fairy wand touching everything with a strange magic. It is like the smile of a friend in time of sorrow.

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.

I welcome the autumnal chill in the air. There is a stimulation about it. Life moves to a different rhythm. There is a sense of change in the atmosphere and change is good inasmuch as it prevents stagnation. We should grow weary of a summer that never ended.

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