DREAMING AND PLANNING

JUST AROUND THE CORNER:  SPRING!

HERE in a quiet and dusty room they lie,

Faded as crumbled stone or shifting sand,

Forlorn as ashes, shriveled, scentless, dry--

Meadows and gardens running through my hand.

In this brown husk a dale of hawthorn dreams,

A cedar in this narrow cell is thrust,

It will drink deeply of a century's streams,

These lilies shall make summer on my dust.

Here in their safe and simple house of death,

Sealed in their shells a million roses leap;

Here I can blow a garden with my breath,

And in my hand a forest lies asleep.

THE SEED SHOP:  

Muriel Stuart

YOU come to fetch me from my work tonight

When supper's on the table, and we'll see

If I can leave off burying the white

Soft petals fallen from the apple tree

(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,

Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea),

And go along with you ere you lose sight

Of what you came for and become like me,

Slave to a springtime passion for the earth.

How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed

On through the watching for that early birth

When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,

The sturdy seedling with arched body comes

Shouldering its way and shedding the earth.

PUTTING IN THE SEED:

Robert Frost

And a garden is a grand teacher.  It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all, it teaches entire trust.  "Paul planteth and Apollos watereth, but God giveth the increase."  The good gardener knows with absolute certainty that if he does his part, if he gives the labour, the love, and every aid that his knowledge of his craft, experience of the conditions of his place, and exercise of his personal wit can work together to suggest, that so surely as he does this diligently and faithfully, so surely will God give the increase.  Then with the honestly-earned success comes the consciousness of encouragement to renewed effort, and, as it were, an echo of the gracious words, "Well done, good and faithful servant."

A GARDENING CREDO:

Gertrude Jekyll

"WE GARDEN BECAUSE WE REMEMBER PARADISE"
Passed on by George Lewis 
of Little & Lewis