Unearthed Words

Words inspired by the garden are the sweetest,

most beautiful words of all.

Journals and poems, musings and books, are a vital part of Botanical History.

And, every now and then, people manage to capture the beauty

and the essence of the garden with words...

The Daily Gardener works to find these words,

celebrate them, and share them with you

in a segment of the show called

Unearthed Words.

Think like a Rose

The serene philosophy of the pink Rose is steadying.
Its fragrant, delicate petals open fully and are ready to fall,
without regret or disillusion,
after only a day in the sun.

It is so every summer.

One can almost hear their pink,
fragrant murmur
as they settle down upon the grass:
Summer, summer, it will always be summer.
 
— Rachel Peden, environmentalist, newspaper columnist, and author

RECENT POEMS

Heard on the Podcast

Jennifer's Favorite Poems

Poems by Season

Gardener’s , like everyone else...

live second by second and minute by minute. What we see at one particular moment
is then and there before us. But there is a second way of seeing.
Seeing with the eye of memory, not the eye of our anatomy,
calls up days and seasons past and years gone by.

- Allen Lacy, The Gardener’s Eye, 1992

Gardening is not a rational act...

What matters is the immersion of the hands in the earth,
that ancient ceremony of which the Pope kissing the tarmac is merely a pallid vestigial remnant.
In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.

- Margaret Atwood, Canadian Writer

For gardeners...

this is the season of lists and callow hopefulness;
hundreds of thousands of bewitched readers are poring over their catalogs,
making lists . . . and dreaming their dreams.

- Katharine White, “A Romp in the Catalogues,” The New Yorker, 1958, collected in Onward and Upward in the Garden, 1979

I have seen women...

looking at jewelry ads with a misty eye and one hand resting on the heart,
and I only know what they’re feeling because that’s how I read the seed catalogs in January.

-  Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, 2007

Good gardeners...

are always young in spirit, for their minds are fixed on spring when others feel only the bitter sting of winter.

– Mary Fanton-Roberts, 1864-1956, American author, in The Touchstone, Oct. 1917

Heat, ma'am! it was so dreadful here, that I found there was nothing left for it but to take off my flesh and sit in my bones.
  — Sydney Smith, English writer, Lady Holland's Memoir, Volume One
August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born.  The odd uneven time.  — Sylvia Plath, American poet, novelist and short-story writer
Whilst August yet wears her golden crown, Ripening fields lush- bright with promise; Summer waxes long, then wanes, quietly passing Her fading green glory on to riotous Autumn.  — Michelle L. Thieme, ecologist and conservationist, August's Crown 
Go along, Mister Winter- Crawl into your frosty bed.  I’m longing like a lover For the watermelon red. — Frank Lebby Stanton, American lyricist
Fairest of the months!  Ripe summer's queen  The hey-day of the year  With robes that gleam with sunny sheen  Sweet August doth appear.   — R. Combe Miller, English poet and clergyman, Fairest of the Months
August is that last flicker of fun and heat before everything fades and dies. The final moments of fun before the freeze. In the winter, everything changes.  — Rasmenia Massoud, author and short story writer, August Weather
August creates as she slumbers, replete and satisfied.  —  Joseph Wood Krutch, American writer and naturalist
If you saw a heatwave, would you wave back?   — Steven Wright, American stand up comedian and writer
As August, so February.
To say it was a beautiful day would not begin to explain it. It was that day when the end of summer intersects perfectly with the start of fall.  — Ann Patchett, American author, Truth and Beauty
Ah, Sunflower, weary of time, Who countest the steps of the Sun, Seeking after that sweet golden clime Where the traveler’s journey is done: Where the Youth pined away with desire, And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow Arise from their graves, and aspire Where my Sunflower wishes to go. — William Blake, English poet, Ah! Sun-flower
How sociable the garden was. We ate and talked in given light. The children put their toys to grass All the warm wakeful August night.  — Thom Gunn, English Poet, Last Days at Teddington
I celebrate myself, and what I assume you shall assume,  For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.  I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. — Walt Whitman, American poet and journalist, Song of Myself
I forgive in flowers, I plant seeds where it hurts. I take my time. I blossom first. — Pavana Reddy, poet and songwriter, I Forgive in Flowers
Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time.  — John Lubbock, Banker, Philanthropist, Scientist and Politician
Warm summer sun, shine kindly here. Warm southern wind, blow softly here. Green sod above, lie light, lie light. Good night, dear Heart, Good night, good night. — Mark Twain, American humorist and novelist, Warm Summer Sun
August was nearly over - the month of apples and falling stars, the last care-free month for the school children. The days were not hot, but sunny and limpidly clear - the first sign of advancing autumn.   — Victor Nekrasov, Russian writer, journalist and editor
 Why is summer mist romantic and autumn mist just sad?  — Dodie Smith, English novelist and playwright, I Capture the Castle (She also wrote The 101 Dalmatians)

Listener Favorites

janelle-awkward-awards

Connect with The Daily Gardener