‘Spring comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers’ – Edna St. Vincent Millay
Our first gardening season as mobile-ers with teeny-tiny plots and I find most of my gardening is done. In fact, I find myself sneaking out back, garden hat firmly in place, drink in one hand and book in the other to make the happy connection of bottom and adirondack chair.
Once settled I watch plants grow, daydream of future gardens 
, admire swallows as they gobble insects on the flyby, and listen to the neighborhood waking up after another winter.
I found a beaut of a little book recently and have been enjoying pages overflowing with a joyful mix of garden wisdoms, historical notes, and quotes by the dozens. It’s called The Curious Gardener’s Almanac by Niall Edworthy.
A few of my favorites so far:
‘If you want to be happy for a day, get drunk
For a week, kill a pig
For a month, get married
For life, be a gardener’ – Chinese proverb
‘My garden will never
Make me famous
I’m a horticultural ignoramus’ – Ogden Nash
This quote I found in the middle of a section on killing slugs and I’m not sure what the writer was suggesting—
‘The mouth of a perfectly happy man is filled with beer.’ – Ancient Egyptian saying.
Almost snorted my cuppa down my shirt at this hysterical historical note—
‘Herein were the olde husbands very careful and used always to judge that where they found the Garden out of order, the wife of the house (for unto her belonged the charge thereof) was no good huswyfe.’ – Barnaby Googe, 1390
How about I end with words from Margaret Atwood—
‘In Spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt’
……….nah, I have to have the last word…………………
Leave a Reply