The Norway of the Year

by Emily Dickinson It is also November. The noons are more laconic, and the sunsets sterner and Gibraltar lights make the village foreign. November always seemed to me the Norway of the year. As featured onThe Daily Gardener podcast: Words inspired by the garden are the sweetest, most beautiful words of all. Emily Dickinson

Read More

November, Remembering Voltaire  

Jane Hirshfield

by Jane Hirshfield In the evenings I scrape my fingernails clean, hunt through old catalogs for new seed, oil work boots, and shears. This garden is no metaphor — more a task that swallows you into itself,  earth using, as always, everything it can. As featured onThe Daily Gardener podcast: Words inspired by the garden…

Read More

If I Had a Flower For Every Time I Thought of You

Alfred Lord Tennyson

by Alfred Lord Tennyson  If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk in my garden forever.   Note: On this day in 1850, the British poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, became the Poet Laureate. As featured onThe Daily Gardener podcast: Words inspired by the garden are the sweetest, most…

Read More

A Virgin Wearing a White Ruff

A Virgin Wearing a White Ruff

by Henry David Thoreau [The] yarrow is particularly fresh and perfect, cold and chaste, with its pretty little dry-looking rounded white petals and green leaves. Its very color gives it a right to bloom above the snow, as level as a snow-crust on the top of the stubble. It looks like a virgin wearing a…

Read More

All in November’s Soaking Mist

All in November’s Soaking Mist

by Ruth Pitter All in November’s soaking mist We stand and prune the naked tree, While all our love and interest Seem quenched in the blue-nosed misery.   Notes: Today is the birthday of the poet Ruth Pitter who was born on this day in 1897. As a gardener herself, Ruth had an excellent understanding…

Read More

Song of Hiawatha

Song of Hiawatha

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Saw the rainbow in the heaven, In the eastern sky the rainbow, Whispered, “What is that, Nokomis?” And the good Nokomis answered: “Tis the heaven of flowers you see there; All the wild-flowers of the forest, All the lilies of the prairie, When on earth they fade and perish, Blossom in…

Read More

November Night

Adelaide Crapsey

by Adelaide Crapsey Listen … With faint dry sound, Like steps of passing ghosts, The leaves, frost-crisped, break free from the trees And fall. As featured onThe Daily Gardener podcast: Words inspired by the garden are the sweetest, most beautiful words of all. Adelaide Crapsey

Read More

Now That’s Something – Discovering New Primroses

Now That’s Something – Discovering New Primroses

by Eudora Welty Few things are riskier than ‘fine writing,’ but Miss Welty has never been afraid to risk it. She spoke once in a conversation about plant explorers who go to Nepal and Sikkim, risking their lives to introduce Alpine flowers to gardens. ‘Now that’s something – discovering new primroses – that’s worth taking…

Read More

I Grow Old, I Grow Old

Old Tree Slab

by Robert Finch ‘I grow old, I grow old,’ the garden says. It is nearly October. The bean leaves grow paler, now lime, now yellow, now leprous, dissolving before my eyes. The pods curl and do not grow, turn limp and blacken. The potato vines wither, and the tubers huddle underground in their rough weather-proof…

Read More

A Great Deal of Weeping

A Great Deal of Weeping

by Beverley Nichols A great deal of weeping goes on in my garden, but it is a happy sort of weeping, for all this bending of branches and bowing of heads is simply due to the fact that so much beauty is displayed on so small a stage.     Note: All week long, The…

Read More

Why Gardens are Increasingly Precious

Why Gardens are Increasingly Precious

by Beverley Nichols One of the many reasons why gardens are increasingly precious to us in this day and age is that they help us to escape from the tyranny of speed. Our skies are streaked with jets, our roads have turned to racetracks, and in the cities, the crowds rush to and fro as…

Read More

People Who do Not Like Geraniums

People Who do Not Like Geraniums

by Beverley Nichols Long experience has taught me that people who do not like geraniums have something morally unsound about them. Sooner or later, you will find them out; you will discover that they drink, or steal books, or speak sharply to cats. Never trust a man or a woman who is not passionately devoted…

Read More

Three Flowers

Three Flowers

by William Watson I made a little song about the rose And sang it for the rose to hear, Nor ever marked until the music’s close A lily that was listening near. The red red rose flushed redder with delight, And like a queen her head she raised. The white white lily blanched a paler…

Read More

I Have Great Faith in a Seed

I Have Great Faith in a Seed

by Henry David Thoreau Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.         Note: National Simplicity Day is observed on July 12th…

Read More