If 'heartache' sounds exaggerated then surely you have never gone to your garden one rare morning in June to find that the frost, without any perceptible motive, any hope of personal gain, has quietly killed your strawberry blossoms, tomatoes, lima and green beans, corn, squash, cucumbers. A brilliant sun is now smiling at this disaster with an insenstive cheerfulness as out of place as a funny story would be if someone you loved had just died.

There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you.... In spring, summer and fall people sort of have an open season on each other; only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself.

I love spring anywhere, but if I could choose I would always greet in a garden.

It’s a fair-sized job to write a book that people can be bothered just to read; when they begin to steal copies, you are really getting some place.

There is peace in the garden. Peace and results.

You know how some people seem to think that their love for classical music makes them spiritual or at least something quite special? And others who think you are a monster if you don't 'love children,' however obnoxious the children may be? Well, I found out that many people who love flowers look down on those who don't.

If 'heartache' sounds exaggerated then surely you have never gone to your garden one rare morning in June to find that the frost, without any perceptible motive, any hope of personal gain, has quietly killed your strawberry blossoms, tomatoes, lima and green beans, corn, squash, cucumbers. A brilliant sun is now smiling at this disaster with an insenstive cheerfulness as out of place as a funny story would be if someone you loved had just died.