A garden is half-made when it is well planned. The best gardener is the one who does the most gardening by the winter fire. |
A garden requires patient labor and attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them. |
A person cannot love a plant after he has pruned it, then he has either done a poor job or is devoid of emotion. |
Anyone who acquires more than the usual amount of knowledge concerning a subject is bound to leave it as his contribution to the knowledge of the world. |
Even though the college man raises no more wheat than his neighbor, he will have more satisfaction raising it. He will know why he turns the clod; he will challenge the worm that burrows in the furrow; his eyes will follow the field mouse that scuds under the grass; he will see the wild fowl winging its way across the heaven. All these things will add to the meaning of life and they are his. |
Even though the college man raises no more wheat than his neighbor, he will have more satisfaction raising it. He will know why he turns the clod; he will challenge the worm that burrows in the furrow; his eyes will follow the field mouse that scuds under the grass; he will see the wild fowl winging its way across the heaven. All these things will add to the meaning of life and they are his. |
Every decade needs its own manual of handicraft. |
Extension work is not exhortation. Nor is it exploitation of the people, or advertising of an institution, or publicity work for securing students. It is a plain, earnest, and continuous effort to meet the needs of the people on their own farms and in the localities. |
Fact is not to be worshipped. The life which is devoid of imagination is dead; it is tied to the earth. There need be no divorce of fact and fancy; they are only the poles of experience. What is called the scientific method is only imagination set within bounds. Facts are bridged by imagination. They are tied together by the thread of speculation. The very essence of science is to reason from the known to the unknown. |
Give the children an opportunity to make garden. Let them grow what they will. It matters less that they grow good plants than that they try for themselves. |
Humble is the grass in the field, yet it has noble relations. All the bread grains are grass - wheat and rye, barley, sorghum and rice; maize, the great staple of America; millet, oats and sugar cane. Other things have their season but the grass is of all seasons... the common background on which the affairs of nature and man are conditioned and displayed. |
I do not yet know why plants come out of the land or float in streams, or creep on rocks or roll from the sea. I am entranced by the mystery of them, and absorbed by their variety and kinds. Everywhere they are visible yet everywhere occult. |
I have no patience with the doctrine of pure science, that science is science only when it is uncontaminated by application in the arts of life; and I also have no patience with the spirit that considers a piece of work to be legitimate only as it has direct bearing on the arts and affairs of men. |
If there is no land, there are porches or windows, balconies or small green spaces attached to houses. |
Is there any progress in horticulture? If not, it is dead, uninspiring. We cannot live in the past, good as it is; we must draw our inspiration from the future. |