The farmer and the gardener are both busy, the gardener perhaps the more excitable of the two, for he is more of the amateur, concerned with the creation of beauty rather than with the providing of food. Gardening is a luxury occupation; an ornament, not a necessity, of life.

A flowerless room is a soulless room, to my way of thinking; but even a solitary little vase of a living flower may redeem it.

Women, like men, ought to have their years so glutted with freedom that they hate the very idea of freedom.

See the last orange roses, how they blow / Deeper and heavier than in their prime, / In one defiant flame before they go.

I do not like January very much. It is too stationary. Not enough happens. I like the evidences of life, and in January there are too few of them.

A good start in life is as important to plants as it is to children: they must develop strong roots in a congenial soil, otherwise they will never make the growth that will serve them richly according to their needs in their adult life.

Everywhere bees go racing with the hours, / For every bee becomes a drunken lover, / Standing upon his head to sup the flowers.