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.

Farmers are philosophical. They have learned that it is less wearing to shrug than to beat their breasts.

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.

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.

Only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself.

The unmulched garden looks to me like some naked thing which for one reason or another would be better off with a few clothes on.

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