"and the little girl said, but which is a weed and which is not? and the man answered with, If it pulls out easy, stick it back in the ground. If it's hard to pull out, keep pulling and pulling and pulling and pulling and pulling and pulling and pulling and pulling, And the little girl said, OK I get it, don't pull anything, then I won't pull the wrong thing. Or I can just walk away and wait till the flowers and then I will know what to keep pulling and pulling and pulling and pulling." My grandpa to me when I was a little girl Fran

Not exactly a garden quote, but here's another little piece of prose I came across. It's sort of about relaxing about however our garden is, and appreciating and accepting things as they are. It's a nice one for a rainy day like today ... WHAT'S LEFT I used to wait for the flowers, my pleasure reposed on them. Now I like plants before they get to the blossom. Leafy ones  foxgloves, comfrey, delphiniums  fleshy tiers of strong leaves pushing up into air grown daily lighter and more sheened with bright dust like the eyeshadow that tall young woman in the bookshop wears, its shimmer and crumble on her white lids. The washing sways on the line, the sparrows pull at the heaps of drying weeds that IÂve left around. Perhaps this is middle age. Untidy, unfinished, knowing thereÂll never be time now to finish, liking the plants  their strong lives  not caring about flowers, sitting in weeds to write things down, look at things, watching the sway of shirts on the line, the cloth filtering light. I know more or less how to live through my life now. But I want to know how to live whatÂs left with my eyes open and my hands open; I want to stand at the door in the rain listening, sniffing, gaping. Peaceful and joyous, just a simple person before God. ~ Kerrie Hardie ~

Trees by Bliss Carman is a poem about trees - but it does cover the forest exquisitely.

I've read two of Anita Shreve's books, neither of which impressed me greatly. The first was The Pilot's Wife, but I can't recall a blooming thing about it. The second, The Weight of Water, was more interesting since it was about the Smuttynose Murders where a couple of Norwegian immigrant women were killed and a third escaped by hiding from the murderer on the tiny island where the killings occurred. I like historical true crime accounts (this happened in the 1870s), but Shreve's book is a fictionalized story which automatically makes me value it less, even if it is very well written which it must not have been or I would have remembered it better. Strange Fits of Passion doesn't sound very appealing to me. Vee, the U.S. law that you referred to is part of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution which states (among other things) that there will be no "abridging the freedom of speech, [or] infringing on the freedom of the press..." It is the right of the American people to know of criminal actions and for journalists to inform them of developments in any criminal case that is considered for trial. As for jurors' names and identities, those are not published until after a verdict is found or a mistrial is declared if no verdict is rendered. Jurors have the option, then, after the conclusion, of talking to the press. Some are very willing, for whatever reasons they have. The freedom of speech and freedom of the press are much cherished rights in the U.S., but they are not without controversy: namely, for criminal trials there can be the danger of 'trying the case in the press/media' and the worry that a defendant cannot get a fair trial and a change of venue may be asked for. With today's media saturation all over the country, venue changing is not as effective as it once was. Sub judice drives American journalists and news followers nuts in countries where the practice of investigations and trials is to keep everything opaque, under wraps, and as impenetrable as possible.