for those of us with short attention spans in the garden:

"I've noticed something about gardening. You set out to do one thing and pretty soon you're doing something else, which leads to some other thing, and so on. By the end of the day, you look at the shovel stuck in the half-dug rose bed and wonder what on earth you've been doing."

Anne Raver
"Deep in the Green"
1995

Re above: isn't that the truth! There must be a quote somewhere about going out into the garden with a couple of tasks to do and coming back in with a dozen.

Anne Raver, my soulmate!

Yeah that describes me perfectly too. -Ais.

"No poet I've ever heard of has written an ode to a load of mature".

Ruth Stout
How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back
(1955)

Ms. Stout, I beg to differ. Any poem embroidered with flower imagery owes much to a "load of manure."

White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast-fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

- Ode to a Nightingale, John Keats

I think you are at cross purposes;) We are all full of manure! It's good for the garden! -Ais.

I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation. It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a rose of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green.

~Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mosses from and Old Manse

To plant trees is to give body and life to one's dreams of a better world.

~Russell Page,The Education of a Gardener,1962

And conversely, cutting down their trees has led to the fall of many civilizations.

From A Southern Garden by Elizabeth Lawrence, regarding fall: "In the garden this season should be the climax of bloom, rich in a new beauty all its own, and not just a period when there is some color left over from summer."

The colors that remain in my garden are intensified by the colder weather. Roses that were washed out all summer are now neon pink. I have a purple fall blooming salvia that is regal. And with the backdrop of the native foliage, a little color goes a long way.

This is the payback for all those unbearably humid hothot days. Folks back home love to throw that in my face, but I am so used to the long growing season and mild winters (this is my 10th), that I would not want to go back.

"A garden is never so good as it will be next year."

- Thomas Cooper
"Horticulture" Magazine (Jan 1993)

Good one Marsha! Hope does spring eternal in gardeners.

A short little snippet from Two Tramps In Mudtime by Robert Frost:

"The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March."

April can truly be the cruelest month in New England, Frost country. You expect so much and sometimes it really does not deliver. Early spring is one of the things I like the most about the South!

Yes, we are very lucky to be in a part of the country that ushers in spring so early, like a balm for the gardening soul.
I remember reading a little gardening prayer sometime back from what must have been a northern gardener:

"Dear Lord before I die, let me garden in Zone 7"

Amen!

spring here is wonderful, indeed, but let's not forget the gloriously long & warm fall season here. it's mid-november, and as i was walking around out there this morning, this northerner was particularly appreciative of all that is still in bloom in my yard.

I thought this was profound:

Plant carrots in January and you'll never have to eat carrots. ~Author Unknown

Found this one this morning. Sounds like my gardens...

I appreciate the misunderstanding I have had with Nature over my perennial border. I think it is a flower garden; she thinks it is a meadow lacking grass, and tries to correct the error. ~Sara Stein, My Weeds, 1988

LOL, I like that one... reminds me of the (very) old commercial:
"It's not nice to fool Mother Nature"
Yikes, am I dating myself!!!!!!!!

that's a great quote, ais. i've been toiling for days in an attempt to discourage mother nature's efforts to grow japanese stilt grass in my garden along the woods line :)

I am fighting her over the stilt grass issue myself. It seems she would have it all over my yard... with a little japanese honeysuckle, wild strawberries, creeping charlie, etc. tossed in too. :( Keep up the good fght! Death to stilt grass!!!!-Ais.

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books. ~Walt Whitman

good old walt. he pretty much nailed my perspective :)

i've' bid farewell to my impatiens, they will surely melt with tonight's forecasted 24 degree temps ... but, in honor of the inevitable, i offer this quote for today:

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show. ~Andrew Wyeth

Yes, the starkness of the winter landscape is gorgeous.

I'll have to make that my mantra for the next few weeks! I DO love winter, I DO love winter....

Winter is when I'm content to leave my garden, travel to other climes, and enjoy Nature there.

if only i *could* travel to other climes ... i'd book a flight to wherever that "sapphire tower" blooms :)
(see recent kiwi thread)

I will stow away too. Summer will soon be getting underway on the flip side of the world. I hope we like sheep, marsha!

My mom just got back from New Zealand. It's spring there. Need I say more? -Ais. (green with envy)

I remember after the election about this time last year, some people were considering expatriating. New Zealand was one of the countries accepting new citizens with open arms.

i love sheep! i still have my favorite childhood stuffed toy - a lamb w/wind-up music box :)
funny u mention that claire, i was one of those
giving serious thought to expatriating to england or new zealand, best gardening locations i could think of. i've never seen a ho-hum photo of the NZ landscape, it's all so beautiful. i wonder if their arms are still open :)

"england has climate - we have weather."

This is getting spooky, marsha. I have a collection of sheep... old German ones and others made of real wool. And my favorite movie is The Piano (NZ not so pretty in that film)!

I'm telling you, you've met your evil twin, marsha. I have a collection of tiny sheep... old German ones and others made of real wool. And my favorite movie is "The Piano" (NZ not so pretty in that film)!

Not sure if it still holds true but a dear friend of mine moved to New Zealand and only lasted a year. Her husband was Canadian and lasted longer (they split up while there). Her problem was finding a job. Even though she had a PhD and a Masters degree no one would hire an American - she ended up picking apples at an orchard for minimum wage. She said that in the touristy areas they were welcoming to all with money to spend but outside of those cities there was much open and violent hostility to Americans. She considered adopting a fake accent to avoid getting yelled at in the super market, on the street, at church...etc. Her teenage son had an even worse time fitting in to the school system.

I've heard celebrities that own homes there also say that it is just too far from home. Very few folks move there and stay for long.

My understanding is that you have to have a certain degree of stateside monthly income ($2000???) in order to get your name on the list for citizenship. It mostly works out for retirees. Its the same for places like Costa Rica and Mexico.

Why do New Zealanders dislike Americans? I knew a New Zealand couple years ago, the man was nice and laid-back but his wife was different -- she kept going on and on about how awful America was in general. I remember her especially at a party, a very laid-back accepting get-together hosted by a university prof with his grad students, post docs, etc, but everybody thought she was too much. I thought this attitude was just her, and that she'd had too much to drink; it hadn't occurred to me that there was countrywide hostility.

My mom said the people there were very friendly. (Different for tourists I think) I believe that they are becoming a popular retirement place for wealthy Americans, and I think perhaps they just don't want their country over-run with them. There is a lot of anti-American sentiment in many foreign countries, by the way. I don't know, maybe our foreign policy has something to do with it... -Ais.

well, pup, it looks like your collection of sheep in sanford will have to do :)

my daughter spent the summer before last in berlin, and the german students she lived with gave her some advice upon arrival there: don't look, or act, american. the summer before that she spent in italy & scandinavia - friends gave her the same advice. interestingly, in her travels abroad prior to 2000, masking her nationality was never mentioned.

Yes, I know there's a lot of anti-American sentiment abroad. :) I just had no idea New Zealanders might yell at/ ostracize Americans who moved there.

I guess France is the opposite. I had a French teacher who was from the countryside in France, and she said that France was a lot like the US: more rude pushy people in the cities, more laid-back friendly people in the country.

It's easy to stereotype any country or region from personal experiences. I'm sure there are tendencies. It's like "Southern Hospitality" and "Northern Brashness"...there is some truth in both, but also plenty in the reverse.

Anti-American sentiment is a huge problem for us now, and I have to say I'm right in there with them. (Hate to have to put on a foreign accent for the sins of others.) I've lost much of my patriotism since the country starting going down this current road of deception and ignorance. God help our children with all this intelligent design and mixing of religion in with government. We'll be a theocracy before we're done. Lately the right to question, the right of free speech has been challenged at the top. It really disgusts me. Think I'll go to Mt. Vernon and have a heart to heart with 'ol George. Now, there was a George I'm proud to call an American and a heck of a gardener too!

It's amazing that this discussion erupted from doc dot's innocent little quotation last Saturday. Now that I'm on everyone's Sen. McCarthy list, it's time for a new one. I was reminded of Proust's lines on the sense of smell, by ais's comment about her christmas tree:

"When nothing else subsists from the past, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered· the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls· bearing resiliently, on tiny and almost impalpable drops of their essence, the immense edifice of memory" -Marcel Proust "The Remembrance of Things Past

Isn't this incredibly true! Walked into a Food Lion yesterday, one whiff of evergreen threw me back 40 years or so.

Political correctness is one of the current evils too. I get sick of it, you can't hardly say anything anymore.

Well, I think the pendulum will swing the other way before too long. The public is tiring of Bush and there's been all of those recent revelations about Lewis Libby, Karl Rove, etc. I'm not going to go on anymore about politics, don't want to get Disneyed.

I'm am so with you on that one. Political correctness is basically phoniness. YUK...I'm usually out on that limb by myself. Martin Luther King knew its evils Especially in the area of race relations, which may be our #1 problem, we need to start talking out in the open.

There was an excellent black author on NPR yesterday discussing just that. Unfortunately, with my galavanting, I missed most of it.

Here's to hoping that pendulum swings fast! I only caught a little of that author yesterday on NPR. He was very interesting.
Nice quote Claire, maybe getting us back on track before we all get Disneyed (though I gather Ivilliage isn't as strict). Smells are one of the strongest senses for remembering things. -Ais.

This is cut and pasted from another website, but I thought it appropriate.
As you gobble the holiday feast and ponder all of your thankful thoughts, don't forget those many "taken-for-granted" little things which give the good life real gusto.

I want to mention some of the "Thanksgivings of Gardening" which all of us share:

1. Be thankful for physical strength which is necessary to prepare a garden.
2. Be thankful for that look of joy that flows from your youngster when he picks that first red tomato.
3. Be thankful for an understanding family who will eat your garden-grown vegetables regardless of how they look.
4. Be thankful for the personal pride stimulated by a successful garden.
5. Be thankful for the invaluable experience gained from struggling to produce a garden.
6. Be thankful for the vegetable farmer who does produce a good crop every year to supply us when we fail.
7. And last but not least, be thankful for the miracle of growth which we all, whether young or old, experience each and every time we plant a seed and watch it grow.

REMEMBER, things COULD BE WORSE. You could:
-wake up face down on the pavement.
-put your bra on backward and it fits better.
-call Suicide Prevention and they put you on hold.
-see a "60 Minutes" news team waiting in your office.
-see your birthday cake collapse from the weight of the candles.
-have your son tell you he wishes Anita Bryant would mind her own business.
-turn on the news and they're showing emergency routes out of the city.
-have your twin sister forget your birthday.
-wake up and discover your waterbed broke and then you realize that you don't have a waterbed.

Perhaps a bit off-topic, but in seeing the term "Disneyed"(an apt one , sure to enter the lexicon), figgered it must mean, "No Undue Political Talk in This Happy Happy Land" That about it?

So, being curious, went to DisneyWorld's gardening page, they plant Alot, so figgered the must have something up about plantings, and was very surprised by this on their site:

"If a plant or tree is thriving in your community there is a good chance it will do the same in your landscape. A plant found to be flourishing as a native in a local undeveloped location may be a great addition to your garden."

I do wish they said "wild" or "natural ecosystem" instead of "undeveloped", but, I was pleasantly surprised by the inclusion at all.

They also have a decent page on wildlife gardening, linked below. Ain't that nice? So the quote isn't a poetic one, but nicely thought-provoking that the Disney horticulturists give space to that effort. I'm thankful! They have a large audience, so it's important that they give this awareness.

Here is a link that might be useful: Disney Backyard Habitat page

Before Spike sold GardenWeb to iVillage if a response was deemed inappropriate you would not be able to post or move your way throughout the system. Everything you touched would automatically send you to the Disneyland website. Thats why folks mention being sent to Disneyland should they talk about something that might upset other people.

I still say - this site is like the best garden club ever! over time some of us have gotten to know each other rather well. Even though I may belong to a few garden clubs I can never attend a meeting, I'm just too busy. But with this site I can have gardening conversations throughout the day no matter where I am and we really only get together a few times each year. So much easier. What I don't understand is peoples insensitivity, so some of us may not agree with other people's viewpoints! its America. Freedom of speech is one of the most important parts of our constitution. The world is one big family - we may not always get along but we are still related by blood.

Ok, too much diet coke.... I'll shut up now

Thanks for the explanation, John, and to Phylla for opening up the subject. I'm was getting dizzy rather than disneyed trying to find that word in slang dictionaries. But, boy, did I learn a few new ones in my search! I'm way cool now. Found out that GW is off the hook and that I am FISH.

Anyway, I so prefer the iVillage tolerance level for free expression, and would have been disneyed on day one with the old host. As I've voiced before, I don't value political correctness in the least, but view it as a societal evil. We all need to learn to grow up and not confuse discourtesy with having an opinion and expressing it openly.

Love y'all and value this forum lots...but that said, pup's motto is wysiwyg. Hope I haven't started speaking in third person...so full of myself.

peace, claire in sanford

I thought it was kind of funny that people were sent to Disneyland, a "vacation" from the Forum while they and other forum members cooled off. However, let's face it, these rules keep people more polite than they otherwise might be. It's probably still possible to be disneyed or the current equivalent thereof if one tried hard enough.