quote

"Besides germination, April is also the month for planting.  With enthusiasm, yes, with wild enthusiasm and impatience you order seedlings from the nurseries, for you cannot exist any longer without them; you promised all your friends who have gardens that you would come for cuttings; I tell you that you are never satisfied with what you already have.  And so, one day, some 170 seedlings meet in your house, and they must be planted immediately; and then you look round in your garden and find with overwhelming certainty that you have no space left for them!  ...'No, it's not possible here,' he murmurs in a low voice; 'here I have those damned chrysanthemums; phlox would smother it here...and near this achillea there is no room either--where shall I put it?  ...Ha, here is a bit of space; wait, my little seedling, in a moment I will make your bed.  So, there you are, and now grow in peace.'  Yes, but in two days the gardener will discover that he has planted it right on top of the scarlet shoots of an emerging evening primrose..."
- Karel Capek, from The Gardener’s Year

quote

"That strain again; it had a dying fall,
O' it came o'er my ear like the sweet south
That breathes upon a bank of violets
Stealing and giving odour."
- William Shakespeare

quote

"There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream;

The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem

Apparelled in celestial light"

- William Wordsworth

quote

"If it were of any use, every day the gardener would fall on his knees and pray somehow like this:
O Lord, grant that in some way it may rain every day, say from about midnight until three o'clock in the morning, but you see, it must be gentle and warm so that it can soak in; grant that at the same time it would not rain on campion, alyssum, helianthemum, lavender, and the others which you in your infinite wisdom know are drought-loving plants--I can write their names on a bit of paper if you like--and grant that the sun may shine the whole day long, but not everywhere...and not too much; that there may be plenty of dew and little wind, enough worms, no plant-lice and snails, no mildew, and that once a week, thin liquid manure and guano may fall from Heaven. Amen. "
-Karel Capek, The Gardener's Year, 1929

quote

"We must learn to look on plants not as mere points of color, but as old friends on whose coming we can rely; and who, returning with the recurring seasons, bring back with them pleasant memories of past years."

Henry Bright

quote

"The boughs of the oak are roaring inside the acorn."
- Charles Tomlinson

quote

"A garden is a private world or it is nothing, and the gardener must be allowed his vagaries."
- Eleanor Perenyi

quote

"Almost anything you do in the garden, for example weeding, is an effort to create some sort of order out of nature's tendency to run wild. There has to be a certain degree of domestication in a garden. The danger is that you can so tame a garden that it becomes a thing. It becomes landscaping."
- Stanley Kunitz

poem

For My Daughter, Age 16, Downcast by Winter

by Philip Legler

April now, and from the ground up

the snow is going, melting

in its six-month hold, the way

ice locks the bay in. Trout,

deep under, rise as if

from their shadows, and along

Lakeshore you park our car

off the road to watch the ice-

breaker slice through and open us

up to summer, the first ore boat

at the harbor.

Ashore, you wade

through puddles, mud, slush,

water flooding our town,

in gutters, from roofs, wind

blowing off Lake Superior, shaking

the Amoco sign like kids

banging a lid. A kite,

bobbing with its string adrift,

swoops over Presque Isle,

climbs a moment, lifts your head

to the sun in a perfect sky.

patting self on back, breaking arm

This web log been getting some notice lately, completely undeserved, but happily accepted! Unfortunately, lately I haven't been posting regularly - life has been getting in the way of art, so to speak. If you're here for the first time, forgive the mess, and please, look to the labels in the sidebar... there might be something worth your visit, there.
What prompted this mea culpa? I ran across a compliment on another website today - Betsy's Herb Garden was listed by the writer as one of the 50 best blogs to read to learn about herbalism.
 50 best blogs to learn about herbalism


During the last few years I've been asked to advertise a couple of garden products, and to write for a well known herb magazine ... but purely as a volunteer proposition, without any real monetary payment other than getting my "name" out there into the big world, and, wooo! a link back to my blog.
Ahem, I don't need to advertise my blog. I have all the Attagirls I'll ever need from paid staff who know the precise value of volunteers* for their own program's bottom lines. I've volunteered for non-profits thousands of hours, literally. I've made memories and  friends, and have earned the opportunity to contribute to my community, but no points on my Social Security account, nor gas money for a' that. Brownie points, not redeemable for cash. My mother raised me wrong.

*over 20 dollars an hour in 2010, what I call "padding".

quote

"Seeds are a link to the past."
- Rosalind Creasy

quote

"Wth umbled hair of swarms of bees,

And flower-robes dancing in the breeze,

with sweet, unsteady lotus-glances,

Intoxicated, Spring advances."

Translated from Sanskrit poem

quote

"Oh, how this spring of love resembleth
The uncertain glory of an April day!
Which now shows all the beauty of the sun
And by and bye a cloud takes all away."
- William Shakespeare

quote

"We begin as a mineral. 
We emerge into plant life and
into animal state, and then into
being human, and always
we have forgotten our former states,
except in early spring, when we slightly recall
being Green again."
- unknown (Can anyone i.d. the origination of this quote?)

Here's another snippet from who knows where(?):

" I am a part of all you see
 In Nature: part of all you feel:
 I am the impact of the bee
 Upon the blossom; in the tree
 I am the sap--that shall reveal
 The leaf, the bloom--that flows and flutes
 Up from the darkness through its roots. "

quote

"It may indeed be phantasy, when I

Essay to draw from all created things

Deep, heartfelt, inward joy that closely clings;

And trace in leaves and flowers that round me lie

Lessons of love and earnest piety."

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

quote

"Sell the country? Why no sell the air, the clouds, the great sea?"

- Chief Tecumseh

quote

"A real gardener is not a man who cultivates flowers; he is a man who cultivates the soil ... If he came into the Garden of Eden he would sniff excitedly and say: "Good Lord, what humus!"
- Karl Capek

quote

"The more help a person has in his garden, the less it belongs to him."

- william H. Davis

quote

"I love the verse that, mild and bland,
Breathes of green fields and open sky.
I love the muse that in her hand
Bears flowers of native poesy."
- The Native Muse by John Clare

poem

You won't find them in places where society goes,
Like flower shows.
Their affections
Run more to junk yards and other low-rent sections--
Not flowers to make perfume of or wear.
People see them in their lawns and swear.
Cows eat them and their milk tastes funny.
Bees make them into honey.
The farmer turns them under with his plow,
Or makes them into wine if he knows how.
They hang around street corners on pipestem legs,
And taste good in salad with vinegar and hard-boiled eggs.
In broken bricks and cinders they
Do well.  Also in clay.
Hills they prefer to valleys.
They like to grow
Where kids go,
In vacant lots and alleys.
Little girls use them for various things,
Such as money.  They put them on strings,
Or hold them under their chins to see if they like butter.
Golfers knock their heads off with a putter.
You can split them with your tongue to make long curls,
Which small comedians wear to look like girls.
They hug the earth where lawnmowers mow,
And so survive.
Elsewhere they stretch taller.
In areas where nothing else will grow
They thrive--
More like the sun than sunflowers,
Only smaller.
They can't be stopped although you hoe and spray them;
The best that you can hope is to delay them.
No skirmish ever proves to be the last;
No victory quite manages to stay won.
They seem to propagate about as fast
As a middle-aged gardener can run.
There isn't any more that you can say
About these tawny, undesired plants
(Teeth of the lion is what they're called in France)
Except that certain things are here to stay,
Things that don't pertain to public good,
Such as firecrackers, unplanned parenthood,
Snowballs, or a bedtime story--
Things you'd never dream
Of including in a modern social scheme.
Dandelions fall in this category.
- Will D. Stanton