Second Nature Quotes
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Second Nature Quotes
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“A garden should make you feel you've entered privileged space -- a place not just set apart but reverberant -- and it seems to me that, to achieve this, the gardener must put some kind of twist on the existing landscape, turn its prose into something nearer poetry.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
“Anthropocentric as [the gardener] may be, he recognizes that he is dependent for his health and survival on many other forms of life, so he is careful to take their interests into account in whatever he does. He is in fact a wilderness advocate of a certain kind. It is when he respects and nurtures the wilderness of his soil and his plants that his garden seems to flourish most. Wildness, he has found, resides not only out there, but right here: in his soil, in his plants, even in himself...
But wildness is more a quality than a place, and though humans can't manufacture it, they can nourish and husband it...
The gardener cultivates wildness, but he does so carefully and respectfully, in full recognition of its mystery.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
But wildness is more a quality than a place, and though humans can't manufacture it, they can nourish and husband it...
The gardener cultivates wildness, but he does so carefully and respectfully, in full recognition of its mystery.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
“Seeds have the power to preserve species, to enhance cultural as well as genetic diversity, to counter economic monopoly and to check the advance of conformity on all its many fronts.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
“Tree planting is always a utopian enterprise, it seems to me, a wager on a future the planter doesn't necessarily expect to witness.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
“The green thumb is equable in the face of nature's uncertainties; he moves among her mysteries without feeling the need for control or explanations or once-and-for-all solutions. To garden well is to be happy amid the babble of the objective world, untroubled by its refusal to be reduced by our ideas of it, its indomitable rankness.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
“Mowing the lawn, I felt like I was battling the earth rather than working it; each week it sent forth a green army and each week I beat it back with my infernal machine. Unlike every other plant in my garden, the grasses were anonymous, massified, deprived of any change or development whatsoever, not to mention any semblance of self-determination. I ruled a totalitarian landscape.
Hot monotonous hours behind the mower gave rise to existential speculations. I spent part of one afternoon trying to decide who, it the absurdist drama of lawn mowing, was Sisyphus. Me? The case could certainly be made. Or was it the grass, pushing up through the soil every week, one layer of cells at a time, only to be cut down and then, perversely, encouraged (with lime, fertilizer, etc.) to start the whole doomed process over again? Another day it occurred to me that time as we know it doesn't exist in the lawn, since grass never dies or is allowed to flower and set seed. Lawns are nature purged of sex or death. No wonder Americans like them so much.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
Hot monotonous hours behind the mower gave rise to existential speculations. I spent part of one afternoon trying to decide who, it the absurdist drama of lawn mowing, was Sisyphus. Me? The case could certainly be made. Or was it the grass, pushing up through the soil every week, one layer of cells at a time, only to be cut down and then, perversely, encouraged (with lime, fertilizer, etc.) to start the whole doomed process over again? Another day it occurred to me that time as we know it doesn't exist in the lawn, since grass never dies or is allowed to flower and set seed. Lawns are nature purged of sex or death. No wonder Americans like them so much.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
“In the same way that the picturesque designers were always careful to include some reminder of our mortality in their gardens -- a ruin, sometimes even a dead tree -- the act of leaving parts of the garden untended, and calling attention to its margins, seems to undermine any pretense to perfect power or wisdom on the part of the gardener. The margins of our gardens can be tropes too, but figures of irony rather than transcendence -- antidotes, in fact, to our hubris. It may be in the margins of our gardens that we can discover fresh ways to bring our aesthetics and our ethics about the land into some meaningful alignment.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
“We are at once the problem and the only possible solution to the problem.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
“Lawns are a form of television”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
“All the accomplished gardeners I know are surprisingly comfortable with failure. They may not be happy about it, but instead of reacting with anger or frustration, they seem freshly intrigued by the peony that, after years of being taken for granted, suddenly fails to bloom. They understand that, in the garden at least, failure speaks louder than success. By that I don’t mean that the gardener encounters more failure than success (though in some years he will), only that his failures have more to say to him—about his soil, the weather, the predilections of local pests, the character of his land. The gardener learns nothing when his carrots thrive, unless that success is won against a background of prior disappointment. Outright success is dumb, disaster frequently eloquent. At least to the gardener who knows how to listen.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
“Of the seven deadly sins, surely it is pride that most afflicts the gardener.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
“To plant trees,” Russell Page wrote in his memoir, “is to give body and life to one’s dreams of a better world.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
“worshippers of the market are a bit more realistic than worshippers of nature: they long ago stopped relying on the free market to supply us with such necessities as food and shelter. Though they don’t like to talk about it much, they accept the need for society to “garden” the market.)”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
“we need, and now more than ever, to learn how to use nature without damaging it.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
“The more serious about gardening I became, the more dubious lawns seemed. The problem for me was not, as it was for my father, the relation to my neighbors that a lawn implied; it was the lawn’s relationship to nature. For however democratic a lawn may be with respect to one’s neighbors, with respect to nature it is authoritarian. Under the mower’s brutal indiscriminate rotor, the landscape is subdued, homogenized, dominated utterly. I became convinced that lawn care had about as much to do with gardening as floor waxing, or road paving. Gardening was a subtle process of give and take with the landscape, a search for some middle ground between culture and nature. A lawn was nature under culture’s boot.
Mowing the lawn, I felt like I was battling the earth rather than working it; each week it sent forth a green army and each week I beat it back with my infernal machine. Unlike every other plant in my garden, the grasses were anonymous, massified, deprived of any change or development whatsoever, not to mention any semblance of self-determination. I ruled a totalitarian landscape.
Hot monotonous hours behind the mower gave rise to existential speculations. I spent part of one afternoon trying to decide who, in the absurdist drama of lawn mowing, was Sisyphus. Me? A case could certainly be made. Or was it the grass, pushing up through the soil every week, one layer of cells at a time, only to be cut down and then, perversely, encouraged (with fertilizer, lime, etc.) to start the whole doomed process over again? Another day it occurred to me that time as we know it doesn’t exist in the lawn, since grass never dies or is allowed to flower and set seed. Lawns are nature purged of sex and death. No wonder Americans like them so much.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
Mowing the lawn, I felt like I was battling the earth rather than working it; each week it sent forth a green army and each week I beat it back with my infernal machine. Unlike every other plant in my garden, the grasses were anonymous, massified, deprived of any change or development whatsoever, not to mention any semblance of self-determination. I ruled a totalitarian landscape.
Hot monotonous hours behind the mower gave rise to existential speculations. I spent part of one afternoon trying to decide who, in the absurdist drama of lawn mowing, was Sisyphus. Me? A case could certainly be made. Or was it the grass, pushing up through the soil every week, one layer of cells at a time, only to be cut down and then, perversely, encouraged (with fertilizer, lime, etc.) to start the whole doomed process over again? Another day it occurred to me that time as we know it doesn’t exist in the lawn, since grass never dies or is allowed to flower and set seed. Lawns are nature purged of sex and death. No wonder Americans like them so much.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
“What memoir of childhood doesn't at some point turn on the scent of a sweet pea or a freshly cut lawn or a boxwood hedge, to leap the fence of years?”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
“Improving the soil improved the man.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
“Much of gardening is a return, an effort at recovering remembered landscapes.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
“The garden is an unhappy place for the perfectionist. Too much stands beyond our control here, and the only thing we can absolutely count on is eventual catastrophe.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
“Weeds, as the field guides indicate, are plants particularly well adapted to man-made places. They don’t grow in forests or prairies—in “the wild.” Weeds thrive in gardens, meadows, lawns, vacant lots, railroad sidings, hard by dumpsters and in the cracks of sidewalks. They grow where we live, in other words, and hardly anywhere else.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
“Lawns are a form of television.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
“The gardener learns nothing when his carrots thrive, unless that success is won against a background of prior disappointment. Outright success is dumb, disaster frequently eloquent.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
“It is too late in the day-there are simply too many of us now-to follow Thoreau into the woods, to look to nature to somehow cure or undo culture.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
“Among the many, many things the green thumb knows is the consolation of the compost pile, where nature, ever obliging, redeems this season’s deaths and disasters in the fresh promise of next spring.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
“…there is room enough for a world between a lilac and a wall.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
“It’s astonishing, actually, how much anger an animal’s assault on your garden can incite.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
“Lawns are nature purged of sex or death. No wonder Americans like them so much.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
“I don’t know, {she} reminds me of a biology teacher I had in 8th grade, another dutiful demystifier, inveterate empiricist and wearer of sensible shoes. First class of the year, Mrs. Voight announced in a smug tone of voice, striving for the matter-of-fact, that a human being was nothing more than a collection of chemicals that can be had from a biological supply company for approximately $4. Why so cheap? Because we were 95% water and the rest consisting of relatively common forms of carbon.
I knew that day that even if Mrs. Voight was right she was not going to teach me anything I needed to know. Everything that lives is 95% water. Genius is 95% perspiration, 5% inspiration. Success is 95% hard work, OK, I get it, but what about that 5%? Tell me watermelon is 99% water and you still haven’t told me anything interesting. Like, what about the 1%? Because chances are that’s where you’re gonna find the watermelon.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
I knew that day that even if Mrs. Voight was right she was not going to teach me anything I needed to know. Everything that lives is 95% water. Genius is 95% perspiration, 5% inspiration. Success is 95% hard work, OK, I get it, but what about that 5%? Tell me watermelon is 99% water and you still haven’t told me anything interesting. Like, what about the 1%? Because chances are that’s where you’re gonna find the watermelon.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
“I don’t know, {she} reminds me of a biology teacher I had in 8th grade, another dutiful demystifier, inveterate empiricist and wearer of sensible shoes. First class of the year, Mrs. Voight announced in a smug tone of voice, striving for the matter-of-fact, that a human being was nothing more than a collection of chemicals that can be had from a biological supply company for approximately $4. Why so cheap? Because we were 95% water and the rest consisting of relatively common forms of carbon.
I knew that day that even if Mrs. Voight was right she was not going to teach me anything I needed to know.
Everything that lives is 95% water. Genius is 95% perspiration, 5% inspiration. Success is 95% hard work, OK, I get it, but what about that 5%? Tell me watermelon is 99% water and you still haven’t told me anything interesting. Like, what about the 1%? Because chances are that’s where you’re gonna find the watermelon.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
I knew that day that even if Mrs. Voight was right she was not going to teach me anything I needed to know.
Everything that lives is 95% water. Genius is 95% perspiration, 5% inspiration. Success is 95% hard work, OK, I get it, but what about that 5%? Tell me watermelon is 99% water and you still haven’t told me anything interesting. Like, what about the 1%? Because chances are that’s where you’re gonna find the watermelon.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
“Wealth is constantly being created and destroyed in the garden, but the accounts never balance for very long. A shortage of nutrients develops in this sector, a surplus in that one. The value of water fluctuates wildly. Who could hope to orchestrate, much less master so boisterous an assembly of the self-interested. The Gardner’s lot is to try and get what he wants from his plants while they go heedlessly about getting what they want. At the risk of s training the metaphor, think of the gardener as something like the chairman of the Federal Reserve, powerful certainly, but far from omnipotent. The best he can hope to do is smooth out the peaks and valleys of his garden’s cycles, restrain the lythrum’s rampant growth, stimulate a depressed campanula, channel the territorial greed of artemisia silver king. The garden is an unhappy place for the perfectionist. Too much stands beyond our control here, and the only thing we can absolutely count on is eventual catastrophe.”
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
― Second Nature: A Gardener's Education