Gardens on the Mind

With the weather warming (finally!) and seed catalogs arriving, my mind has gone to the seeds and bulbs I’ve buried in my garden. Crocuses popping up from their winter slumber make this obsession even worse. You've figured it out: I just want to think of flowers right now and so to indulge my mood -- and perhaps yours -- here are 13 quotes about gardens.

Header courtesy of samulli

1. Each spring, a gardening instinct, as sure as sap rising in the trees, stirs within us. We look about and decide to tame another little bit of ground.-- Lewis Gantt

2. If you've never been thrilled to the very edges of your soul by a flower in spring bloom, maybe your soul has never been in bloom. -- Terri Guillemets

3. When the world wearies and society fails to satisfy, there is always the garden.-- Minnie Aumonier

4. Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity.--John Ruskin

5. Earth laughs in flower.-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

6. If dandelions were hard to grow, they would be most welcome on any lawn.-- Andrew Mason

7. We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.-- Abraham Lincoln

8. Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed.-- Walt Whitman

9. Perfumes are the feelings of flowers. --Heinrich Heine, The Hartz Journey

10. I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.-- Claude Monet

11. "Look at us," said the violets blooming at her feet, "all last winter we slept in the seeming death but at the right time God awakened us, and here we are to comfort you."-- Edward Payson Rod

12. When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one and a lily with the other. -- Chinese proverb

13. Bread feeds the body, indeed, but flowers feed the soul. -- The Koran

Those crocuses aren't the biggest or the showiest flowers in my garden. But I love them for their spunk and their willingness to be the first to bloom. To me, they say spring, at last, has arrived. Do you have a favorite flower? A sign you look for to herald the coming of spring? Please share.

Sources

http://www.quotegarden.com/flowers.html http://www.northerngardening.com/quotes.htm