Still, no gardener would be a gardener if he did not live in hope.

For bees are captious folk / And quick to turn against the lubber's touch.

Gardening is a luxury occupation: an ornament, not a necessity, of life.... Fortunate gardener, who may preoccupy himself solely with beauty in these difficult and ugly days! He is one of the few people left in this distressful world to carry on the tradition of elegance and charm. A useless member of society, considered in terms of economics, he must not be denied his rightful place. He deserves to share it, however humbly, with the painter and poet.

all the small squalors of the body, known only to oneself, insignificant in youth, easily dismissed, in old age became dominant and entered into fulfilment of the tyranny they had always threatened.

I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal.

For a young man to start his career with a love affair with an older woman was quite de rigueur ... Of course, it must not go on for too long. An apprenticeship was a very different thing from a career.

There's no beginning to the farmer's year, / Only recurrent patterns on a scroll / Unwinding...