Sayings, One Liners, Adages, Quips, Observations, Whimsy, Punch Lines

Humorous Exaggerations, Maxims, Perverse Reflections, Random Notes, Errors, Aphorisms, Advice, Brief Rants

Odd Definitions, Jokes, Thoughts, Speculations, Elucidations, Suggestions, Satirical Theorems, Philosophical Reflections

Themes:  Gardening     Body-Mind     Knowing     Time     Philosophy     Ethics and Virtues     Religion
 

Over 1,043 Sayings
 

By

Michael P. Garofalo

  Mike Garofalo pulling onions in May 2007.

This webpage was last expanded, modified, edited, or revised on July 18, 2021.
This webpage has been online since March of 2001.

Copyright © 2001-2021 by Green Way Research

All rights reserved by Michael P. Garofalo, M.S.

Red Bluff, California, 1998-2017

Vancouver, Washington, 2017-

"Onion Garden;" A Concrete Poem by Michael P. Garofalo

Quotes for Gardeners

Quotes, Sayings, Proverbs, Poetry, Maxims, Quips, Clichés, Adages, Wisdom
A Collection Growing to Over 3,800 Quotes, Arranged by Over 250 Topics
Over 15 Megabytes of Text
Many of the Documents Include Recommended Readings and Internet Links.
Compiled by Mike Garofalo

Cloud Hands Blog

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Gardening     Nature Mysticism     Spirituality and Gardening    

How to Live a Good Life: Advice from Wise Persons     Virtues

An Old Philosopher's Notebooks 

Epicureanism     Pragmatism     Pleasures     Happiness

Tai Chi Chuan     Qigong     Walking     Taoism

Poetry by Michael P. Garofalo

Touching     Seeing     Hearing     Smelling    Tasting     The Body

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

1.   Gardens are demanding pets.

2.   Time is something everyone runs short on and finally runs out of. 

3.   An important gardening judgment -  When to Do Nothing! 

4.   Remember that gophers also need to make a living; preferably in somebody else's garden. 

5.   If you don't find stillness when sitting still, find it in gardening. 

6.    You are given Today - make it matter.  

7.    A callused palm and dirty fingernails precede a Green Thumb.

8.    To garden is the reward.

9.    Absolutes squirm beneath realities.  

10.  Night and day were the first clock. 

11.   Gardening is quietly showing gratitude to plants. 

12.   Going half-way, half-heartedly, will give less than a quarter of the satisfaction. 

13.   Location, location, location .... is also true for plants. 

14.   Having fun may be habit forming. 

15.   Your greatest discoveries in the yard often come by accident. 

Trees - Quotes for Gardeners

16.   Never underestimate the power of those that like things neat and tidy.

17.   Everything is what it is, and not something else; but, everything else helps make it what it is.

18.   The Uhr Spell is "Abundant Fertility."

19.   Complexity is closer to the Truth. 

20.   When the hoe handle is loose, you will have misplaced the steel wedges.   

21.    Not to move either hand, nor clap, nor think too much are all good for zen gardening.    

22.    Wishes are like seeds, few ever develop into something.

23.    We did not come from dust, nor shall we return to dust, nor are we dust in the wind.

24.    The empty garden is already full.

25.    Keep one corner of the garden for explorations beyond the ordinary.   

26.   As you move your hands so you move your mind.  

27.   If you need five tools to solve a problem in the garden, four of them will be easy to find. 

28.   Dearly respect the lifestyle of worms.   

29.   Some pleasures lick, chew, savor and swallow us.

30.   Valuable gardening vocabulary includes:  ))*!¢¢%@!+!*#@%#!+??**¢¢!!!

31.    Watering is the practice of gentleness.   

32.    The luckiest gardeners are often the hardest working and most prepared gardeners.

33.    There is not much to say about the "Unknown."  

34.    Philosophers wonder about why. 

35.    Like a garden, the room for self-improvement grows larger each year.  

Quotes for Gardeners

Quotes, Sayings, Proverbs, Poetry, Maxims, Quips, Clichés, Adages, Wisdom
A Collection Growing to Over 3,800 Quotes, Arranged by Over 250 Topics
Over 15 Megabytes of Text
Many of the Documents Include Recommended Readings and Internet Links.
Compiled by Mike Garofalo

36.   The garden, like the labyrinth, requires a going in and a coming out.  

37.   The love of gardening may blind you to the beauty of the garden.   

38.   Thankfully, we can imagine nearly anything─ which helps prevent boredom,
              reinforces our illusions and prejudices, and occasionally leads to truth.

39.   The mill of the mind grinds time into memories. 

40.   Gardeners are divided into those that think others are doing it wrong.   

41.   Always leave extra time for unraveling the hose.

42.   When all the chores are done, the avid gardener will invent some new ones.

43.   The exceptional weather will always come right after you put the seedlings out.  

44.   A gardener can be sure he will always grow  tired.  

45.   Never just One: fruit, a hoe, the moving Sun.  

Flowers - Quotes for Gardeners

46.   Honor the dead by showing compassion for the living.

47.   Gardening often straightens the body and aligns the spirit.  

48.   When the Divine knocks, don't send a prophet to the door.

49.   Sitting in a garden and doing nothing is high art everywhere.  

50.   Round things are very nice - raindrops, fruit, women, the earth.   

Our Paths in the Valley Blog

51.   The lawn mower will mulch and pull itself along - when it starts. 

52.   The garden did as gardens do - without sentimentality. 

53.   A garden recreates itself daily; we seldom step in the same garden thrice.

54.   Despite the gardener's best intentions, Nature will improvise.

55.   Graveyards and landscape gardens, coffins and flowers - fitting friends. 

56.   We are essentially water, vegetables, fruits, roots, nuts and grains.

57.   Our gardens, like ourselves, are mostly a memory.

58.   The sparkplug always wiggles its way out of place.

59.   Gardeners turn into the soil their lifetime.

60.   A garden speaks no language, yet many gardeners still listen. 

Michael P. Garofalo
September 2004

I Welcome Your Comments, Ideas, Contributions, and Suggestions
E-mail Mike Garofalo in Vancouver, Washington

61.    The end of the garden is at the end of the hose.  

62.    The grandest view from the garden is the open sky.  

63.    Weeding one part of the garden creates a compost pile in another.  

63.    When the sun hat fits, it's ugly.

65.    Learning how to garden is learning how to slow down.  

Jokes, Puns, Riddles, One-Liners and Humor for Gardeners and Farmers

66.   Gardens mean "Enclosures for keeping others out." 

67.   Greed, theft and exploitation are the foundation of many a grand landscape garden. 

68.   Those that sweat the most in creating a grand garden are most often forgotten. 

69.   Sitting in a garden no more makes you a gardener that sitting in the kitchen makes you a stove. 

70.   The Liberty Tree flourishes when we cultivate fairness, generosity, curosity,  
         tolerance, industry, courage, and respect.  .

71.   Knowing what not to do this month in the garden is useful information.

72.   Horticultural arts and sciences are flourishing worldwide, and have very deep tap roots in antiquity.   

73.   Time may wait for no man, but seems to muddle and poke along quite slowly for gardeners.    

74.   Only two percent of all insects are harmful.  Why are they all in my garden?

75.   Different places, different advice.   

The History of Gardening:  A Timeline From Ancient Times to 2000

76.   Gardening is sometimes superior to just sitting on your butt.

77.   Old gardeners do die, and plenty are slowly spading away. 

78.   Gardening is the root of the village; and, the oldest occupation of both women and men.     

79.   In general, be more specific. 

80.   Plants from China and the Americas revolutionized modern European agriculture and horticulture.

81.   Manure and wood ashes settled villages. 

82.   Digging, dunging, mounding, mulching, seeding, watering, weeding ... over and over and over!

83.   The telephone always rings when your at the far side of the garden.

84.   A single robin hunting on the ground - and sometimes a worm squirms away.

85.   "One year's seeding makes seven years' weeding."   Weeder's Advice

86.   The settled and peaceful society are the foundation of ornamental horticulture.  

87.   We may love our garden and yet be a danger to it.  

88.   A garden is better than a mirror for revealing yourself.    

89.   Praise is a kind of Miracle Grow, a manure, a growth hormone.      

90.   Does a plum tree with no fruit have Buddha Nature?   Whack!!     

Trees  -   Quotes and Links

91.   "Wisdom is often nearer when we stoop than when we soar."   Wordsworth's Insight

92.   Beauty is the Mistress, the gardener Her slave.                [Pillow Talk?]

93.   Gardening dissolves mental chatter in the sweat of bodily effort.  

94.   For most spiritual exercises the first lesson is the most important.  

95.   "There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments."  - Phillip's Rule

96.   When life gives you onions, it stinks. 

97.   Some gardeners don't grow old and stop playing; they stop playing and grow old.

98.   Little problems have easy solutions; for big problems it's probably too late.

99.   "I consider every plant hardy until I have killed it myself."  -  Smither's Brown Thumb Dictum

100.  Springtime for birth, Summertime for growth; and all Seasons for dying. 

Quotes for Gardeners

A Collection Growing to Over 3,800 Quotes, Arranged by 250 Topics
Quotes, Sayings, Proverbs, Poetry, Maxims, Quips, Clichés, Adages, Wisdom
Over 15 MB of Text
Many of the Topics Include a Reading List and Internet Links
Compiled by Mike Garofalo

101.   The living produce the living, the dead decay into compost.

102.   Why is it that you can find four gloves for the left hand, and none for the right? 

103.   "Other people's tools work only in other people's gardens."   Bloch's First Law of Gardening 

104.   What goes down usually comes up. 

105.   The more I study nature, the less I admire the Creator. 

106.   Tooth and nail, and the stench of a dead animal on the wind.

107.   How can gardening be considered a "leisure time" activity?

108.   "A postulate is a principle which admission is necessary to establish a later demonstration."

109.   Your garden and you will all die, so celebrate and smell the evergreens today. 

110.   When the oak you planted pushes out the undergrowth, the worms will have pushed you away.

111.   Diversity, multiplicity, relations, combinations, mixtures, complexity  -  rarely just one process or one thing.

112.   What you need the least you will have lots of, and what you need the most will be missing.

113.   Even the Devil wants a grand landscape garden near his comfortable castle.

114.   Goodness casts a dark shadow. 

115.      Gardeners at War with Mother Nature.  Let the Battle Begin!

    115a.   Abandon your post, and Nature will sneak in and steal you blind. 

    115b.   "Defiance is what makes gardeners."   Henry Mitchell

    115c.   Gardeners had better be ready to see the ugly, the deformed, the grotesque, 
                 the dying and the dead.

    115d.   I'm dirty, tired, sore, and my face is red; and, every damn weed in that garden is dead. 

    115e.   When you can't fight on and drop to die; your just a big tasty feast for the crows, 
                 ants, buzzards and flies.

    115f.    "Gardening is more or less a warfare against nature."  James Shirley Hibberd

    115g.   Nature is very tricky, so you must be clever or you will loose. 

    115h.   Observe the enemy, learn, discern Her principles of action, imitate Her, then go beyond Her.

    115i.    "One season of natural free-for-all took me from organic pacifism to biological war."  Patti Hagan

    115j.    While digging, dozens of worms were sliced down - victims of friendly fire.

    115k.   Snail - Squash!   Tomato Worm - Squash!  Grasshopper - Squash!  The Garden Trooper is at War!

    115l.    "I rose as one in a trance, picked up my gun, stepped to the petunia bed and
                shot the pig dead where he fed."  Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

    115m.  Jackrabbits!  Elmer Fudd was correct - get your dogs, traps, and shotgun.

   115n.   "If you are not killing plants, you are not really stretching yourself as a gardener."  J. C. Raulston

   115o.   Soaps, malathion, diazinon, baits, oils ...  land mines and poison warfare! 

    115p.   We hurt and destroy ourselves as we destroy them - such is the nature of the Gardening War. 

    115q.   A nine foot high fence with barbs?  A deer defense system. 

    115r.   If dogs and cats craved raw vegetables, they would have never become pets. 

    115s.   I have never met a grasshopper I didn't dislike. 

    115t.   I'm an organic gardener - I use organic methods to kill the damn mooching pests. 

    115u.   To the compost pile - we take No prisoners!

    115v.   Roundup the Unwanted for the Week of Dying. 

    115w.   Why do we think that Owls are Wise?   They eat gophers.

    115x.   "Chopped off heads fly up, bodies sliced to tiny bits; die dandelions."  Paul Brown

    115y.   Your Observations about the Gardener's War

Quotes for Gardeners

Quotes, Sayings, Proverbs, Poetry, Maxims, Quips, Clichés, Adages, Wisdom
A Collection Growing to Over 3,800 Quotes, Arranged by 250 Topics
Over 15 Megabytes of Text
Many of the Documents Include Recommended Readings and Internet Links.
Compiled by Mike Garofalo

116.   All play and no work makes Jack a dull boy - and pain in the neck for others. 

117.   When you decide to do something first in the garden, you'll get distracted.

118.   The fundamental realms of being: past, present, and future.   

119.   Making simple matters complex or complex matters simple are both bad gardening techniques.

120.   Is the oak tree in the courtyard of your life flourishing?    Gardening and Spirituality

Short Poems and Haiku by Michael P. Garofalo

121.   Weeds multiply in direct proportion to your efforts to eliminate them.

122.   High winds suddenly arise just after you've planted 5 gallon trees.

123.   A hose is your most important gardening tool in California. 

124.   Special visitors will arrive in your cherished garden just as the hard rain begins to fall. 

125.   The mower will run out of gas at the farthest point from the work shed.

126.   Weed when wet - weeds thrive; weed when dry - weeds die.

127.   Everything returns to the One.  What does the One return to?   One what??

128.   The only Zen you'll find flowering in the garden is the Zen you bring there each day. 

129.   A gardener discovers both what's new and something ancient. 

130.   One popular garden crop is poetry.  

Touching     Seeing     Hearing     Smelling    Tasting     The Body

131.   The Mr. and Mrs. Aphids, The Borers, Ms. and Sir Wasp, The Worms 
           and The Ants all live around here.

132.   "Thinly sliced cabbage."  Cole's Law

133.   Gardening teaches many lessons, and the good news is we remember a few.    

134.   Nothing grows in Hell. 

135.   The fountains, pools and streams in Shangri-La are ever full and never polluted. 

The Spirit of Gardening

One Old Druid's Final Journey

Tao Te Ching (Daodejing) by Lao Tzu (Laozi)

Months and Seasons

The Poetry of Michael P. Garofalo

Pragmatism and American Philosophy

Ripening Peaches: Taoist Studies and Practices

An Old Philosopher's Notebooks

Cloud Hands Blog

Body-Mind Fitness Arts

Virtue Ethics

How to Live the Good Life: Advice from Wise Persons

136.   We already live in the Garden of Eden, but we now have to work to keep it growing. 

137.   Remember that the River of Forgetfulness flows by the Elysian Fields.

138.   Paradise and shade are close relatives on a summer day.

139.   The Thirst is so great that many visualize Heaven as being in the Midst of Clouds.

140.   July Into August - Sweating It Out

140a.   Ah ... the warm smell of wet earth floating over the windswept waves of Rice.

140b.   The steady buzzzzzzz of the Katydid chorus, and the bass solo of the croaking Frog - a summer night's serenade.

140c.   "Leaves of Grass"   Some fruits of Walt Whitman's spirit.    Walt,  ... thanks, thanks, thanks!

140d.   Ripening grapes in the summer sun - reason enough to plod ahead.

140e.   We paused, refreshed, as the sun hid behind the swirl of thunderclouds. 

140f.    Almonds, Walnuts, Cattle - oblivious to their end ahead.

140g.   Sunset!!   The mosquitoes attack - we retreat. 

141h.   Also true:  a crape myrtle is a crape myrtle is a crape myrtle. 

141i.    Speechless - we watch the shooting stars on parade.

141j.    Summer: dry brown grass and green leafed cottonwoods; Winter: vice versa.

141k.   Where are the fig blossoms?  Exceptions to every rule.

141l.    Read some haiku poetry with a summertime kigo!

141m.  The spiders, grasshoppers, mantis, and moth larva are all back:  the summer crowd has returned!

Work - Quotes for Gardeners

141.   As with most arts, gardening is an expression of our hands.

142.   Put the right plant in the right place at the right time in the right way - and you won't go wrong. 

143.   "In order for something to become clean, something else must become dirty."  Imbesi's Conservation of Filth Law

144.   We may share a garden with the World, or destroy one. 

145.   Gardening revives the instincts we share with our peasant ancestors.

146.   Autumn:  the reprieve from Summer.

147.   Adversity seldom makes plants stronger or roots deeper - it usually stunts or kills them. 

148.   All beautiful things disappear, and Beauty is the memory of ideas. 

149.   God may have created the first garden, but, typical of Him, He got bored with trying 
           to keep it up and make it better.

150.   Better to wear out than to burn out; rusting away is OK. 

151.   Left to themselves, weeds tend to go from there to everywhere.

152.   Mamma Egret and Kids, The Magpie Team, Mr. and Mrs. Sparrow, 
           and The Finches all live around here.

153.   Four steps to gardening success:  First, Do This; Second, Do That; Third, Water; Fourth, Wait. 

154.   Simplifying our relations to things sometimes allows us to live more complex intellectual 
           and emotional lives.

155.   Sometimes our painful work, intellectual and emotional lives lead us to the simple 
           comfort of things, e.g., gardens.

Clichés Used by Gardeners and Farmers

156.  Simplifying and simplicity are never simple matters.

157.   "There's always a kink when your getting a drink."   Karen Garofalo's Tangled Hose-isms

158.  Most gardeners have a touch of the obsessive-compulsive-manic in their Muse. 

159.  To dig is to discover. 

160.  Gardening is a Performance Art: showing off, living out loud, getting down, making a statement.

161.  The oak and bindweed grow in the same soil; seeds and scissors go back into the same shed.     

162.  Very little is "must do"; much more is "permitted." 

163.  Gardens mirror the extravagance, lavishness, and excesses of Mother Nature's busiest offspring: Mankind. 

164.  Winter does not turn into Summer; ash does not turn into firewood - on the chopping block of time.

165.  "In order to live off a garden, you practically have to live in it."   Hubbard's Rule

Seasons - Quotes for Gardeners

166.   You are deluding yourself if you think that death is an illusion.

167.   Weed, prune, cull, cut down - make room for new growth and new plants

168.   It is often surprising that many of the plants actually thrive. 

169.   We garden day by day, bit by bit, breath by breath - our slices of enlightenment.

170.   Gardeners, mostly parents, love to be in control.        

171.  Chrysanthemums in bloom over a carpet of dry leaves - the contrasts and pathos of beauty.

172.   Fruits, nuts, grains ... sex and food.    Flowers  ... sex and beauty.   

173.   If it were not for the sex life of plants, we would have no sex life of our own.

174.   Just the right words can be worth more than a thousand pictures. 

175.   Your hand hoe will always find its way to the bottom of the weeding barrel. 

176.   When supermarket prices for tomatoes are the lowest, your tomato crop will be at its peak.

177.   There is nothing behind the facts; but, we love to imagine creating something out of nothing.

178.   The particulars, minute particulars, revealing Nothing.

179.   If at first you don't succeed, don't quit yet.  

180.   Preaching the Laws incessantly - the Suchness of Things.       [A hearty gassho to R.H. Blyth and D.T. Suzuki.]

181.   Gardens spend more than they earn. 

182.   We may play with and pass on a garden, possessing one is an illusion.

183.   Likes and dislikes are part of gardening, but must not be a burden.

184.   Agi quod agis:   Do what you are doing.

185.   The Big Valley of California - America's Kitchen Garden and Orchard.

186.   I once read about the dangers of gardening; so I quit reading for two weeks. 

187.   The gardener stands between Heaven and Earth, the Boundless and the Bordered; a minor god with dirty feet.

188.   "Wow!  Show me How!" is the birth cry of a gardener.  

189.   The toil and sweat open ourselves to fruitful possibilities. 

190.   Work - the activity that interferes with gardening.

191.   The garden grew the home.

192.   The first gardeners liked staying close to home, and preferred beans and bread over venison.

193.   Gardeners like to make Mother Nature obey.  

194.   In gardening, we love possibilities as much or more than actualities.

195.   A garden flourishes in the mind's time of last season, next season, and now.

The Spirit of Gardening

One Old Druid's Final Journey

Tao Te Ching (Daodejing) by Lao Tzu (Laozi)

Months and Seasons

The Poetry of Michael P. Garofalo

Pragmatism and American Philosophy

Ripening Peaches: Taoist Studies and Practices

An Old Philosopher's Notebooks

Cloud Hands Blog

Body-Mind Fitness Arts

How to Live the Good Life: Advice from Wise Persons

196.   Everyone believes they can be a good gardener, and some become one.

197.   When gardening, you can merely count the passing days, or you can make each day count.

198.  "Nature soon takes over if the gardener is absent."  Hobhouse's Rule

199.   Civilization is rooted in the hands of the gardeners.

200.   When life gives you lemons, you are probably also out of sugar. 

Onions, An Illustration by Ken Perkins

201.   It takes four seasons to know one year.

202.   One spring and one summer to know life's hope; one autumn and one winter to know life's fate. 

203.   What is a garden that a person may know one; and what is a person that may know a garden?

204.   Your never too old to embrace a stupid idea. 

205.   "Life begins the day you start a garden."   Chinese Proverb

Religion   -  Quotes for Gardeners

206.   Squash squashing, rhubarb rhubarbing; gardeners gardening, Taoists Taoing. 

207.   "Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first."  Murphy's Law #12

208.   By the garden one knows the gardener's work.

209.   Seventy days for wasps, seventy winters for humans; so, quit complaining and garden. 

210.   Starting a new garden, enjoying an old garden - both gardening 

Touching     Seeing     Hearing     Smelling    Tasting     The Body

211.   The main impediment to true and vivid perception is daydreaming about oneself..

212.   Look at the soil, feel the soil, smell the soil: The Beginning!

213.   The meaning is lost in the saying - a nature mystic's dilemma.

214.   Bless the Farm!   Bless the Market!    Bless the Kitchen!

215.   "A garden is always on the move."   Mirabel Osler

216.   Repetition and diversification are Nature's formulas.

217.   The Laws of Gardening are more like useful habits. 

218.   You can sometimes get a handle on life, but it often breaks. 

219.   It's best if you work at one end of the garden, while your wife works on the opposite side. 

220.   Endings for one are beginnings for another.

221.   The wise gardener knows when to stop.

222.   Gardeners must dance with feedback, play with results, turn as they learn.

223.   Where are those damn gloves?

224.   Gardening increases the chances that we might actually talk with our neighbors.

225.   Act on it: garden to Garden.

226.   A walk in the garden is the best tonic for rejuvenation.  

227.   Exploring one's backyard might be more refreshing than a trip to the Big Apple.

228.   The sun does not shine equally on all yards.     

229.   Nature's playfulness is a gardener's delight.

230.   Gardening forces the impatient to wait. 

Awards and Reviews for this Website

231.   Thinking twenty years ahead in your landscape design is less important when your sixty.

232.   Gardening requires no commuting time.

233.   Planting bare-root trees is a paradigm case of optimism. 

234.   Your guilt increases as you look at the price of a quart of Round Up.

235.   Pulling weeds can also clear the mind.  

Cuttings - Short Poems by Michael P. Garofalo

236.   My garden is unique, just like everyone else's.    

237.   Gardening work manifests the organization of our brains; and, in turn, gardening organizes our brains. 

238.   The depth of our being is often unknown until we are uprooted.

239.   "A flower is the epitaph of a seedling, and vice versa."    Rein's Ruminations

240.   I'm on a 90 Day Wonder Diet.  Thus far, I've lost 45 days. 

241.   A flower needs roots; beauty of society of minds.

242.   The mindful gardener will hear less subconscious gossip.

243.   Today, in your garden: just sit, just watch, just listen, just wait.  

244.   "Gardening is complicated, and prejudice simplifies it enormously."  Allen Lacy 

245.   In the morning light, many gardens are enlivened by the Faeries of Perfection. 

246.   Accurate observation is the father of good thinking.  

247.   Always make explicit the costs of success.

248.   Don't fuss over the grass and it dies, fuss over the grass and it gets sick.

249.   Weeding uproots the lives of insects.   

250.   Becoming invisible to oneself is one pure act of gardening.

Spirituality  -  Quotes for Gardeners

251.   The mysterious and fleeting appearances in a garden provide abiding charms for the melancholy soul.  

252.   It is the ordinary commonplaceness of gardening that strikes so many chords of pleasure.  

253.   Yesterday's gone─where? 

254.   We struggle with death in the garden, clearing it away, covering it under; dancing with life's ascension.  

255.   Priapus, lively and naughty, aroused and outlandish, is the Duende de el Jardin.

256.   Inside the gardener is the spirit of the garden outside.

257.   The first taste of emptiness satisfies; thereafter, we find plants to tend.

258.   Is there any garden string that is untangled?  No!

259.   How crude!  How vulgar!  How undignified!   The gardener calmly smiles. 

260.   "Poet: gardener of epitaphs."    Octavio Paz

Vegetables - Quotes for Gardeners

261.  You know you have gardened too much when:

    261a.  All your fingernails are dirty, and both thumbs are green.

    261b.  The smell of manure awakens your senses.

    261c.  You have nightmares about failed cuttings, transplants that grew up, and abandoned garden goals.

    261d.  Even the King birds don't buzz your head.

    261e.  You have more fresh vegetables than the Brady Bunch or Walton Clan could eat in a week.

    261f.   You mumble around your vegetables, and believe the garden speaks to you.

    261g.  You chuckle at inane garden jokes and your "sense of humus" is thick.

    261h.  Diversity is an obsession, and garden catalog purchases are a monthly compulsion.

    261i.   You have held every gardening book and magazine at your local bookstore and public library.  

    261j.   Composting and watering are rituals.

    261k.  The garden speaks to you and you take notes.

    261l.   You decide to create gardening webpages.

    261m. As soon as your head touches the pillow, you instantly dive into a deep sleep.

    261n.  Your doctor tells you that you have Weeder's Elbow along with Spader's Back.

Touching     Seeing     Hearing     Smelling    Tasting     The Body

262.    Sturdy boots and a hard-nosed spirit are safety gear for the gardener.  

263.    The desert garden spoke in a sandy dry dialect, and my understanding of it grew slowly.   

264.    Is the essential being of a tree a wave or matter, or a matter of waving.  

265.    Tending a garden helps in mending the body.

266.    Beware!   Gardening can become a collecting addiction. 

267.    To garden in the rain: irresistible fragrances and fresh air.

268.    Even the fruitless will sometimes flower.

269.    It's what you do tomorrow that makes a difference.

270.    The flower of desire blooms on the barest branch; but only the branch with working leaves can mature the fruit.

271.    The unexpected - a secluded fountain of delight.  

272.    Successful gardeners often think more inside the box. 

273.    Sound ideas and a vivid imagination are crucial gardening tools.

274.    Good gardeners find uses for just about everything.

275.    Gardening failures may teach.

The Heart and Soul of Gardening - Great Reading

276.   Macroclimates dictate the rules of the gardening game, microclimates allow for a few finesse plays. 

277.   How much rain and when are the fundamental questions.   

278.   You will always have five too many or one too few of the PVC couplings you need. 

279.   Gardening is a physical and psychological investment in This Place.  

280.   Many garden plants are tamed creatures and need our frequent attention.    

Mike Garofalo pulling onions in May 2007.

Quotes for Gardeners

Quotes, Sayings, Proverbs, Poetry, Maxims, Quips, Clichés, Adages, Wisdom
A Collection Growing to Over 3,800 Quotes, Arranged by 250 Topics
Over 15 Megabytes of Text
Many of the Documents Include Recommended Readings and Internet Links.
Compiled by Mike Garofalo

281.    The oak does not know that we call it a Quercus.

282.    Looking at your garden involves far more than your eyes. 

283.    Sometimes the real value of a garden is determined by what it does not contain.

284.    All outdoor gardeners organize their work by the months and seasons. 

285.    If gardening is a genuine art, then it will point the way to the good and humane life.

286.   To move is to be alive; gardening work validates our vitality.

287.   Gardening can sometimes restore and polish our character.  

288.   Say a prayer for a good harvest; but don't forget to weed and water.

289.   To lift the mind, move the body.  

290.   Gardening has nurtured many marriages.  

Green Way Blog

This webpage work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Created by Michael P. Garofalo, Green Way Research, Vancouver, Washington © 2001-2021 CCA 4.0

291.   Once we stop looking we often see It right away.      

292.   Knee: a device for finding rocks in your garden.

293.   A new garden becomes an unruly green gang in seven years. 

294.   Gardening emphasizes practices over beliefs; fundamentally, its practices are its beliefs. 

295.   Celebrate Today - garden and be thankful.  

Simplicity - Quotes for Gardeners

296.   Gardening is a kind of deadheading - keeping us from going to seed.   

297.   The scum of the earth comes in many colors.  

298.   Even the clumsy, weak and slow can win at the gardening game.

299.   Gardeners are students of the Master, Nature.

300.   The garden is the temple, and gardening the retreat. 

301.   Gardens for the eyes; gardening for the hands.  

302.   When gardening, half an hour is fifty minutes.   

303.   Increased work will not substitute for decreased watering.      

304.   Plants favor sunshine, we thrive in the shade.

305.   Lawnmower: a magic wand for making teenagers disappear.   

Cloud Hands Blog

Gardening     Nature Mysticism     Spirituality and Gardening    

Philosopher's Notebooks     How to Live the Good Life     Virtues

Taoism     Buddhism     Neo-Paganism

Poetry by Michael P. Garofalo

306.   In the right place at the right time, tomato worms on tomato vines.

307.   With every shovel full of mind muck removed, the well of understanding grows deeper.    

308.   Some degree of dissatisfaction spurs on every gardener.   

309.   Gardening is not a campaign issue - thankfully.   

310.   Green Living is a political issue.

311.   Each day, every gardener needs to rest.

312.   The eyes of a gardener are usually bigger than her hands.  

313.   A gardener that tries to live on his words alone will have to eat them. 

314.   Gardening helps us to carefully attend to the close at hand.  

315.   The joyful gardener is evidence of an incarnation. 

  Weeds and Weeding  -  Quotes for Gardeners

316.    Chop the weeds and hose the water ... the sounds of two hands clapping - with delight. 

317.    Conclusions about your garden are really conclusions about yourself.  

318.    Those who can sit quietly in their garden are rewarded in ten thousand ways.       

319.    Some gardeners joyfully slip over the edge of sobriety and become plantaholics.    

320.    Some dying plants or other mementos of mortality give a garden a richer palette of  meaning.         

321.    My gardening theories are a bit crazy, but are they crazy enough?

322.    Enamored of these flowers, certainly - butterflies, bees and me.       

323.    Gardens hide what gardeners delight in discovering.    

324.    Everything gives birth to something.       

325.    The wise gardener grows happiness under his feet. 

326.    What can happen to a seed is a kind of miracle. 

327.    For Eastern Americans, gardening is the art of weeding; for Westerners, gardening is the art of watering.

328.    Your wet and smelly dog always likes to cozy up real close while you are weeding.

329.    A modest gardener is a powerful force.     

330.    Yes, God and Allah are both still dead, yet plenty is still not permitted
           and virtues still persist. 

331.    Vigorous gardening might help more than a psychiatrist's couch.   

332.    Your pocket knife will be its dullest at just the right time.

333.    A gardener is not a plant - or is she?

334.    A garden is the expression of a gardener's unique interaction with the World.     

335.    "My garden" has as many meanings as there are gardeners. 

336.    When pruning, just prune; when weeding, just weed.  Don't be elsewhere.

337.    The best thing that grows in the garden is a careful gardener.

338.    Somehow, someway, everything gets eaten up, someday.

339.    Autumn Yellow, the reverse of Spring Green.

340.    If weeds did not triumph in the end, we would be in trouble. 

341.    When gardening, the ordinary can become the extraordinary. 

342.    Happiness often creeps up on you unexpectedly while you are working diligently in the garden. 

343.    The form of a garden is the extension of its contents. 

344.    Gardening is the right sport for a lifetime of pleasures. 

345.    When it is time to water, be grateful for the water.

346.    Leaves are sunlight, bound by water, shaped by invisible rules. 

347.    We also grew up in a womb of water.   

348.    When a gardener becomes a gardener, Zen becomes Zen.

349.    Rolling up your sleeves and working in the garden is saying "yes" to life.

350.    Gardening sometimes serves no practical purpose - it is playing.

351.    Some plants thrive when neglected - like crabgrass in the cracks of sidewalks.

352.    Gardeners come to know themselves when they act.

353.    Everyone has a favorite plant - ask "Why?" 

354.    Weed out your imperfections and craziness to harvest the boring and bland.

355.    Does your garden belong to you or to public opinion?    

Zen Poetry

356.   When gardening becomes drudgery - Stop!   

357.   Gardening sometimes takes a few hours of a day, but adds weeks of pleasure to your life.    

358.   Gratefully, shit happens!

359.   Leave one corner of your garden untouched, chaotic, free; and, you will reap insights.

360.   The function a garden serves will lead to its form.   

361.   They won't let an American boy who is an atheist become a Boy Scout, but will allow a Moslem in the club?     

362.   Gardens nurture new and more complex forms of life; including their gardeners.

363.   Seven steps forward and six steps back - the Earth remains.   

364.   Relax and be still around the bees.    

365.   Creative gardening introduces random acts of divergence.   

366.    To garden is one way to become a decent man. 

367.    Go ahead, gardeners, make some mistakes, and please do so with enthusiasm. 

368.    Trying to make some plants flourish is a death sentence.

369.    The art of gardening is one tool for expanding consciousness.

370.    The time you have wasted on your garden is what makes it priceless.

The History of Gardening Timeline

371.   To be free to garden is fine, but to become free to garden is better. 

372.   Sometimes, just one 'thing' is critical because twenty other 'things' are just so.

373.   Our hands help us see our world─yea, our movements enable us to make sense of seeing. 

374.   Flowers do not grow on the map of your garden.  

375.   It is harder for the gardener to let go of old ideas that worked, than to come up with new ideas.   

The Spirit of Gardening

Virtues and a Good Life

One Old Druid's Final Journey

Tao Te Ching  by Lao Tzu

Months and Seasons

Ripening Peaches: Taoist Studies and Practices

The Hypertext Notebooks of Mike Garofalo

How to Live a Good Life: Advice from Wise Persons

Cloud Hands Blog

376.   A garden is a sporting field, an area for play. 

377.   I cannot consider my perceptions as just "in my mind,"
          but also as experiencing details "out there." 

378.   The joy of gardening is often discovered when you are not gardening.  

379.   Your rich, famous, and handsome; and, your garden doesn't care.

380.    Deadlines are sure to inspire the gardener.

381.    Not talking and not thinking awaken the fullness of the five senses.      

382.    The greatest temptation of beauty is replication.     

383.    The meaning of "a beautiful garden" depends greatly on our meaning of "garden."

384.    When your garden continues to amaze you, you have awakened. 

385.    The most startling message of gardening is "silence." 

Index to the Spirit of Gardening Website

386.    Leafing is the Practice of seeds. 

387.    When watering, just water; be aware that watering is taking place.  Allow yourself to enjoy just watering,

388.    Optimists smell the flowers and look for a wedding; pessimists look for a casket.     

389.    Many pursue happiness, gardeners create it. 

390.    Beauty hides between the pauses.      

391.    Getting down and dirty - gardeners like to do it.

392.    Learning to think as a gardener is inseparable from the acts of gardening.

393.    One of the best parts of happiness is the garden. 

394.    Gardening forces you to slow down and savor contemplation.

395.    Gardening tempts you to look, again and again, until the novel is seen.

396.    A paradigm shift in gardening occurs when you hire somebody to do the work.  

397.    One purpose of a garden is to stop time in one place. 

398.    Gardening is a form of moving meditation.  

399.    Gardening is a natural sacrament.

400.    Gardens, orchards, and farms cause many species to become extinct. 

The Spirit of Gardening

One Old Druid's Final Journey

Tao Te Ching (Daodejing) by Lao Tzu (Laozi)

Months and Seasons

The Poetry of Michael P. Garofalo

Pragmatism and American Philosophy

Ripening Peaches: Taoist Studies and Practices

An Old Philosopher's Notebooks

Cloud Hands Blog

Body-Mind Fitness Arts

How to Live the Good Life: Advice from Wise Persons

401.    Gardening is like sex: we sometime produce fine gardens, but we mostly do it for other reasons.    

402.    Planting a tree may be an act of piety.    

403.    Be sure you don't cause long term breakdowns by short term fixes.

404.    A garden is a token of craftsmanship and beauty in all kinds of lives. 

405.    A gardener keeps nature in line, in control, under his thumb; otherwise fecund ugliness reigns. 

The world's largest onion, weighing 18 lb., 1 oz., was grown
by Peter Glazebrook.

406.    A garden does not occur in nature - that is its beauty.

407.    Pause every so often when gardening to celebrate your breathing.    

408.    Some things persist, others desist.   

409.    Look where you slipped, not where you fell.  

410.    Beginning anywhere in the garden, you'll likely end up reflecting on everything.    

How to Live a Good Life: Advice from Wise Persons

411.   Sometimes we can't see the garden because we are staring at the plants.  

412.   Even a god cannot listen to a billion prayers a day. 

413.   Annuals disappear, shrubs perish, trees die, and gardeners are buried; death is the flower of time.   

414.   A plateful of vegetables makes more sense than the Absolute.  

415.   In an instant there is nothing - Time produces Nature.

416.   The difference between a pile of rocks and a rock garden - the eyes and hands of the gardener.

417.   By the time you peel off five layers of reality, it's hard to recall the first. 

418.   A garden tells a story about its maker.

419.   "Getting your hands dirty," applies to more than gardening.   

420.   A home and garden are the embodiment of Place.   

421.   The usefulness of the garden is found in delight, discovery, and the color green.  

422.   Failing to plan is often a surefire plan for failure.  

423.   Failure is part of the cost of experimental gardening.  

424.   Good fences make good gardens.  

425.   Gardening endures because it appeals to people of all ages. 

426.   It's a long time between my garden and the Pacific Ocean.   

427.   Truths need the support of other truths, and need to be useful and good. 

428.   Time will tell, but we often fail to listen.  

429.   Stepping into a backyard garden can be a pilgrimage to the "Holy Land."

430.   The "eternal truths" are sometimes clearly false.   

431.    Pulling onions - the sweet smell begins to stink.  

432.    Seeing with one eye and feeling with the other does help bring things into focus.  

433.    Everyday, the Angel of Death visits the garden - someday too I will touch Her wing.    

434.    Being dead means nothing to the dead.        

435.    Thinking about gardening is grounded in movement.     

436.   Truth is evasive; freedom is more appealing.    

437.   The size of one's garden can be estimated by the thickness of one's wallet.  

438.   "Trivial matters are handled promptly; 
           important matters are never resolved."  Gresham's Law

439.   The happiest gardeners have simply learned how to relax.  

440.   The most worthwhile things often cannot be fully explained.  

441.   Cussing and crabbing relieve the boredom of gardening.

442.   A garden is quite comfortable with immorality and evil. 

443.    "Dung Ho!"   - Swain's Battle Cry

444.   Have you noticed that people praying close their eyes?  People, please open your eyes and think instead. 

445.   The playful gardener often taps into a deep source of wholesome freedom.

446.   Hunger, work, food, satisfaction: the kitchen garden cycle.

447.   The Master of Gardening knows how to go slowly.

448.   Just the ordinary is often quite extraordinary.  

449.   The simplest garden is never simple.

450.   The garden, like life, is a mixture of sand and sugar; yet, even the humble ant
           has the skill to separate the two.   

451.   The root illusion is a belief in that which does not change.   Comments

452.   Just garden - some of the results will be none of your business. 

453.   Many love to garden, some only love gardens - the garden is large enough for both. 

454.   If God gave us technology, why did he wait so long to give us a box of matches or solar power panels.   

455.   The "world" is our ideas, but when I'm dead the world goes on. 

456.   An apple a day drives up the price of apples. 

457.   In labors of love, the love seems to make the sense of labor disappear.

458.   Gardening translates informed plans into experiences.  

459.   A garden: one picture from an epic movie.  

460.   Gardening is the yoga of work and play.  

Cloud Hands Blog

461.   Each time we water can be like the first time if we are fully present in the moment.

462.  "To garden is to let optimism to get the better of judgment."  Perenyi's Rule

463.   There are four sides to every story.   

464.   The garden symbolizes intelligence actualized, and the fortuitous 
           integration of forces that are far beyond our control.  

465.   Gardening teaches us to take our time, slow down, and wait in peace.  

466.  "Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment."   Ducharme's Precept

467.  "Quid facerem?   What should I do?"    Strabo's Query

468.   Gardeners learn to live in worm time, bee time, and seed time.   

469.   The garden is just perfect as it is; and, yet, it still needs a little improvement.  

470.   On garden catalogs:

           The gardening catalogs you have will not have what you want. 

           Mailing lists multiply garden catalogs like Castor Beans.

           You will invariably get three copies of the garden catalog you don't want.. 

           What you want in the garden catalog will often be overpriced.

           When the plant is better than its description in the catalog - we order more catalogs. 

           Promises of fruit being "Sweet" and "Juicy" will sell seeds, and much much more.

           A rich source of ideational compost.

471.    If God existed it would be necessary to have a Goddess because God is just to lazy and incompetent. 

472.    Gardens are a nice place to hide from boring conversations with 
            uninteresting people - yourself included.

473.    Gardens are not inherently meaningful in many ways; but, making a garden
            and caring for it creates meaningfulness.  

474.    One's garden is always reaching upward for the bees, birds, clouds, sun, stars ....

475.    Come to your senses by gardening today.

476.    What?   Another damn Garden of Eden analogy!

477.    The past provides the keys for unlocking the doors of the future, but we must open them.  

478.    There is no garden in the absence of observation.   

479.  "A garden always gives back more than it receives."    Beamish's Precept

480.  "For every credibility gap there is a gullibility fill."   Clopton's Law

481.    A garden is quite ordinary, yet still sacred.  

482.    You can go downhill forever. 

483.    Do not let consistency be an excuse for ignorance.  

484.    Don't grow delusions from a playful imagination.

485.    Being "all natural" is no guarantee of safety.  

486.    A gardener seeks direct experiences, seldom concepts.  

487.    Time will not pass you, but it will follow very close behind you. 

488.    Gardening gets you on your knees; praying is optional.  

489.    The harder we try to be simple, the further we miss the target.

490.    Wise is the person whose heart and mind listen to what Nature says.    

Mike Garofalo in 1993
Hacienda Heights, California

491.   We control the future by modeling it on the basis of the past. 

492.    I never found God in my garden, but goddesses and gods and faeries dance everywhere.

493.    Some animals are always busy cleaning up the dung and the dead.  

494.    Effectiveness determines the value of nonviolence.    

495.    Nan Fairbrother's Postulates:

            Gardens are useful for working off a bad temper.

           Gardening provides us with a subject for polite conversation at dinner.

           We are perverse creatures and never satisfied.   

           Religion has planted many gardens.

496.    Your dog will diligently pursue the alleged gopher in the center of your bed of annuals.

497.    A child's curiosity is a boon to a gardener.  

498.    Good weather all the week, but come the weekend the weather stinks. 

499.    Be suspicious of the man who always embraces only one book.  

500.    Things become more complex when thinking, simpler when beholding.  

The Spirit of Gardening

Virtues and a Good Life

The Poetry of Michael P. Garofalo

Somaesthetics

Pragmatic Philosophy

Epicureanism

One Old Druid's Final Journey

Tao Te Ching  by Lao Tzu

Months and Seasons

Ripening Peaches: Taoist Studies and Practices

The Hypertext Notebooks of Mike Garofalo

How to Live a Good Life: Advice from Wise Persons

501.   Gardening leads us to embody our minds.   

502.    From strong desires great values are born.  

503.    Gardening enables men to embrace their animus.  

504.    Gardeners try to be peaceable, but are sometimes not pacifists.  

505.    A garden draws the eternal from the ever-fleeting.  

506.    Gardens:  nice views out the window.  

507.    While observing your garden you change it.  

508.   "If people listened to themselves more often, they'd talk less."   Courtois's Law

509.    Variety, Creativity and Fertility are the Songs of the Great Goddess. 

510.    Fresh fruit from the tree - sweet summertime.  

511.    If you plant it, they will come.  

512.    Hell is a silent dark world where nothing grows.  

513.    Let the knee feel the ground, and the ground feel the knee.  

514.    It is always darkest before it gets pitch black. 

515.    Make sure that when you want to climb to the top of the ladder that it's leaning against the right tree.  

Touching     Seeing     Hearing     Smelling    Tasting     The Body

516.    To always follow the hard, tough and rough way is foolishness.   

517.   When the weather is too hot they complain, when it's too cold they complain, 
           and when it's just right their watching TV. 

518.   The preferred shrub will grow slowly, the ungainly and ugly shrub will flourish.

519.    Gardening is a Sport.  Hoe for It!   

520.    Your dog will always shit near your favorite garden seat.  

The Green Wizard

Pragmatic Philosophy

521.    Watch the wind singing of the sea.       

522.    When the rare meteor shower occurs, the thick black rain clouds will roll in. 

523.    It is better to cultivate spiritual fruits than religious nuts.  

524.    You can drive Nature out with your hoe, but she always returns.  

525.  We're All Wet! !  

            Water the soil not the plants.

            The end of the garden is at the end of the hose.

            The Golden Mean applies to watering a garden.

            We are primarily weak salty water - chemically speaking.

             Every gallon must work!

             Water comes before food.  

             Drip, drip, drip ...   your way to garden stewardship.

             The good soil available often exceeds the water available.

             One of the best herbicides:  no water.

             How far you are willing to carry buckets of water? 

             After transplanting:   Keep the Roots in Moist Soil!

             Never Waste Water!!!

             Save water under a blanket of mulch.

            "When the well is dry, we know the worth of water."  Ben Franklin's Proverb

             "Gardening requires lots of water - most of it in the form of perspiration."  Erickson's Fact   

             The lack of water will cause blood to be spilled in many wars. 

             Gardens dream about water.

             How much rain and when are the fundamental questions.

             Watering is the essential ritual of gardening.

             All enlightened beings are enchanted by water. 

              I garden, therefore I water.  

526.    Step outdoors at night, alone– in a concert of crickets. 

527.    Setbacks add some salt to every sweet success.  

528.    Gardeners focus on tasks, not on themselves.

529.    The garden is both a means to an end, and an end in itself.

530.    The end of any gardening project is also always a beginning.    

531.    Make a good start, continue a good effort, and make it good in the end.

532.    Just because you have pains, you don't have to be one.  

533.    A garden is a great place for a good belly laugh.  

534.    Gardening can be a spiritual practice, and a way of smiling in the sun.

535.    Where and when will we be content with always being here and now?

Cloud Hands Blog

536.    Someday the hidden waters will stop flowing, and one exhale will be our last.   

537.    Birth and death placed us in the Heavenly Garden, but some choose to make hell for others.

538.    Sowing and reaping - the karma of becoming.          

539.    Trust, my friend.  Don't the trees leaf out - just like that?        

540.    DNA steers our watery flesh, forcing us to be ourselves.  

541.   Work a miracle?  Hah!  Gardening is miracle enough.      

542.   What a wonder!  Just weeding onions!   

543.   We cooperate, we facilitate, we cope - we're "in charge" very little.      

544.   The answer is: there isn't just one.         

545.   There are many paths up the mountain, and the views are not the same going up or coming down.  
         And, there are only a few good paths up and down the mountain.       

546.   Making a living is different from making a life.  

547.   If you keep looking for one thing, you will find many.        

548.   Preparation and follow up take up more time than doing the deed.  

549.   Even Allah cannot alter the past; but our knowledge of the past changes each year.        

550.   Aging and death are epitomized by Autumn.        

551.   Humanity is worse for the planet than swarms of locusts or hurricanes in the summer. 

552.   The minutes might matter more than the day.   

553.   The season determines the week's work.  

554.   What you do now matters more than what you did yesterday.  

555.   Truth deals with the past; Hope deals with the future.

556.   Beauty serves many masters.   

557.   The garden is a great place to hide from argumentative dolts.   

558.   Persons who cannot love trees lack something in their soul.   

559.   We live in a multiverse rather than a universe.    

560.   Ideas have purposes, and maybe ideas just are purposes. 

561.   I intent to live and garden forever - so far so good.

562.   Gardening should enhance you life, not consume it. 

563.   Patience is a tactic, a tool, a realistic coping with facts. 

564.   Minding the mind, massaging the muscles, grokking the garden.  

565.   Open the Gate of Mystery to reach the Marvelous. 

Pragmatic Philosophy

How to Live a Good Life: Advice from Wise Persons

566.   We learn a lot from ignorant gardeners. 

567.   Gardening provides a mutually beneficial nurturing of both garden and gardener.

568.   Better to lend a helping hand than just to point a finger.  

569.   It is already together because we can't think any other way.   

570.   Boundless beauty, largely inexplicable, simply marvelous.   

571.   Springtime flows in our veins.  

572.   Impatience may be justified, but err on the side of patience.  

573.   Beware of the man who speaks of God only as a father or a son.   

574.   That which we don't or can't observe, directly or indirectly, remains rather mysterious.

575.   Silence - never misquoted, sometimes misunderstood, often meaningful.

576.   Is working in the garden really work?   

577.   My garden is an altar.  

578.   Some failures increase our energy and resourcefulness.

579.   "Seeing" is not "believing."

580.   We often overestimate what we can accomplish in a day, and underestimate what we can accomplish in a week.

581.   Be careful not to stand up for that which will cause your downfall.      

582.   Metaphors talk about the Way, but often cannot point to the Way.

583.   Leave enough time for some pointless behavior to reveal your deeper desires.  

584.   The real "miracle" is cause and effect.

585.   Is the garden a fact about the world, or a fact about what a gardener believes. 

586.   My mind is a sea I cannot see into; I merely skim along its surface. 

587.   Moving the mind from the head to the heart gives birth to the spirit.  

588.   The mother of sound is silence, the father is dancing air.  

589.   The seed and the egg: primal concerns.  

590.   As we think less we might listen more. 

591.   Planting winter branch cuttings - talk about getting something from almost nothing. 

592.   An idea or process that does not work,
          provides little or no benefits,
          does not achieve any desired goals,
          is inefficient or ineffective,
          has no cash value,
          does not mesh with known and agreed upon facts,
          does not have widespread international agreement,
          or provides no evidence for evaluation,
          and is of no practical consequence,
          or produces disliked or negative consequences,
          is what we generally label as "untrue" or "false." 

593.   Showing my grand daughter our rose garden - a sermon in scents.    

594.   I am a machine that turns beans into memories.        

595.   A garden is an incomplete artwork. 

Cloud Hands Blog

Gardening     Nature Mysticism     Spirituality and Gardening    

Philosopher's Notebooks     How to Live the Good Life     Virtues

Taoism     Buddhism     Neo-Paganism

Poetry by Michael P. Garofalo

596.   The seed idea for "God" is springtime. 

597.   Planting trees is a story for the next generation.     

598.   A God who is understood is really misunderstood ... actually no God at all.    

599.   We choose our brute facts to help keep us from dying sooner than we desire.      

600.   Things always go downhill, fall apart, wear out  ... the arrow of Time pierces everything.     

601.   Stop looking for the Greenman and He will appear. 

602.   Before you swear at the overgrown ivy, beware of Dionysus. 

603.   The gardener is a priestess, the garden her temple and followers, gardening her liturgy. 

604.   Fortunately, creeds and dogmas don't help you become a good gardener.

605.    A soul is colored Spring green.  

606.   I tend the Valley Spirit Garden.  Does your garden have a name?

607.   Shoveling dirt, the ecstasy sweated away.

608.   Religion is intimate with awe, anxiety, fear, danger, and death.

609.   We make a garden for food, medicine, and wellbeing.

610.   Our presence defines our niche. 

611.   For a gardener, two plus two can equal two hundred.  

612.   The seed is the plan; earth, sun, air and water execute the plan.

613.   When life gives you onions, you aren't making lemonade.  

614.   The Sacred Circle is the Circle of the Seasons. 

615.   Agriculture may be objective but gardens are not. 

616.   There are many keys to happiness; but, most often, the door is wide open. 

617.    Our choices should maximize, not minimize, the options for choices by others. 

618.    When the answers are elusive or confusing, examine the questions.   

619.    My soul is like an onion, peel off the fleshy layers and your left with nothing. 

620.    Drop the body and the mind disappears.   

621.   Onions, death and soldiers bring tears to your eyes.  

622.   Lifestyles work or not; truth is not their justification. 

623.   Avoid dogmatists, they often end up treating you like a dog. 

624.   Time prevents too much from happening at once. 

625.   A million years and a second have the same feeling for the dead gardener. 

626.   All metaphors aside - only living beings rise up in the Springtime; dead beings stay quite lie down dead. 

627.   Many living beings are beautiful; many dead things are ugly. 

628.   The most fascinating animal in the garden is the Homo sapiens. 

629.   Roundness is the Holy Shape. 

630.   Any gardener who is not using the scientific method will waste time and money. 

I first read classical and modern Western and Eastern philosophers when I was fifteen,
and have since considered myself a person with a humanistic, pragmatic, secular, and
philosophical outlook on most  matters.   I have been content to use reasoning and science
to help me solve most of my problems.   Like most people, I make room for mystical,
mythical, poetic, and symbolic viewpoints when dealing with many artistic,
psychological and values issues. 

-  Mike Garofalo

631.    What you will see depends on when you look. 

632.    The month determines the mood. 

633.    Take the time to melt into the Details.  

634.   When we think of the fifth fact, we have often forgotten the first. 

635.   Stay loose enough in body and mind to be surprised each day.

636.   Having a poor memory helps a great deal in finding happiness.      

637.   If you want to know who I am, eat my food with me.  

638.   The less we choose to move, the less our sensi-motor skills are used, the less we can perceive.

639.   One Big Bang ... maybe; probably mucho bangs. 

640.   A gardener loves the rain; also, for the resting time it brings.

641.   Time is rooted in Place.

642.   While gardening the borders between work and play become blurred.

643.   Prepare for new growth - cut above the bud.

644.   Failures, disorder and death are the Grim Reaper of Entropy at work. 

645.   Gardening is but one battle against Chaos.

The Spirit of Gardening

One Old Druid's Final Journey

Tao Te Ching (Daodejing) by Lao Tzu (Laozi)

Months and Seasons

The Poetry of Michael P. Garofalo

Pragmatism and American Philosophy

Epicureans

Ripening Peaches: Taoist Studies and Practices

An Old Philosopher's Notebooks

Cloud Hands Blog

Body-Mind Fitness Arts

How to Live the Good Life: Advice from Wise Persons

646.   A little of this and a little of that, and some exceptions - these are the facts.

647.   When gardening, look up more often.

648.   People who speak loudly about the "One True God" or the "One True Religion" scare the shit out of most of us.

649.   Garbage In, Compost Out. 

650.   Most Laws of Gardening are merely local ordinances. 

651.   Enhance your garden experience by sharing with others.

652.   Water avoids being held; and everything leaks. 

653.   Most realities come in clumps. 

654.   Gardening is a passion to continue, despite failure and uncertainty.  

655.   The best things in life are more expensive than you think. 

656.   To work alone in the garden is a delectable form of sweetened isolation. 

671.   Changing distance gives new meaning to things. 

672.   Great things are done when women and gardens meet. 

673.   A poverty of vision is not the only limitation.

674.   Don't interfere, be still, and listen to the litanies of bees. 

675.   As I mow, some birds think of eating bugs.

683.   This cabbage, these carrots, these potatoes, these onions ... will soon become me.  Such a tasty fact!

Mabon, Autumn Equinox, Last Summer High Day

694.    My being-time is like an onion, always layers and layers of meaning to peal away ― nothing at the center. 

705.    Garden history is too often a reflection of our ignorance and biases.

Touching     Seeing     Hearing     Smelling    Tasting     The Body

706.    Chaos breaks its own rules to allow Order to play.

707.    Take life with a grain of salt, and a icy margarita.  

708.    Some flourish when crowded together, others don't.

709.    Wise is the person who sees the cherry trees in bloom and does not say "life is not a bowl of cherries." 

710.    We often confuse what we imagine with what is. 

711.    Dogmatists are less useful than dogs. 

715.    It is more about You and Now, rather than Them and Back Then. 

716.    Home is a place where it feels right to lounge around in your pajamas. 

718.    Gardening boils down to doing and seeing for yourself.    

719.    It is best to shut one's mouth in face of the sacred.        

721.   Our eyes are bigger than our gardens, and certainly bigger than our budgets.  

722.   The little choices, day after day, are the biggest issue.

725.    After understanding thousands of the details, a common variety god is really quite superfluous. 

726.    It's OK to think while gardening; but, ill advised to garden while thinking.

731.   Fallen autumn leaves and dead things all senseless and free.  

732.   Gardening is part of living pleasantly, wisely and honorably. 

733.   Study nature and discover the limits and the abundance.  

734.   Don't spoil what is already growing in your garden by desiring what you have not. 

735.   What has come to be cannot be undone; but the future has fewer restrictions. 

The Spirit of Gardening

One Old Druid's Final Journey

Tao Te Ching (Daodejing) by Lao Tzu (Laozi)

Months and Seasons

The Poetry of Michael P. Garofalo

Ripening Peaches: Taoist Studies and Practices

A Philosopher's Notebooks

Epicureanism

How to Live a Good Life

Somaesthetics

736.   Create your own garden, the god's certainly won't.   

737.   Gardening helps heal the suffering of people. 

738.   No garden lasts for long - neither will you. 

739.   If you think you are damned if you do or damned if you don't, your not thinking creatively enough. 

740.   On Friendship:

a)  There are different levels of friendships, some are half-empty and others are rising and over half-full.

b)  Some information about yourself is best never shared, not even with friends. 

c)  A few friends are just a pain the ass, and not friends for long. 

d)  Many friendships are sustained by a mutual hatred of another person or group.

e)  A good friendship is like a two way paved street,
      a bad friendship like a one way dirt road coming to a dead end. 

741.  Some have developed bad Promethean habits of endlessly pushing big rocks up mountains,
          liberated persons remove the hills and toss the rocks aside.        

742.  When you say "to hell with it" about your problem, that is where you are likely headed. 

743.  Read until you go to seed. 

744.  Death's door is always unlocked.  

745.  One's "true self" is changing and elusive.  

746.  That something is eternal is unverifiable; it is one premise.    

747.  Unclench your fist to give a hand. 

748.  Gardening can accommodate those prone to mania.   

749.   Death is light's out forever. 

750.   Sunshine is Life for gardeners. 

751.  All Seeing is seeing something. 

752.  Even nothing is a kind of something. 

753.  Mother Earth favors cyclic times, Father Time favors linear time. 

754.  Poetic imagination turns light into Divine Light.  

755.   The Ruler of the Garden is most often a woman. 

756.   I believe in "God"; I just spell Him "Fiction."    

757.   Generalizing is both sometimes useful and sometimes not so useful. 

758.   Most of us sink and stink to the level of our public and private bullshit. 

759.   Ordinary reality is good enough for most sensible people;  a "higher" calling is answered by few. 

760.   Don't be misled by "higher" and "lower"; higher is not better than lower. 

761.  Don't kid yourself: seeing is not necessarily believing. 

762.  To many the sun is a god and the earth is a goddess; and, our imaginations are boundless.  

763.  Winter is nice because gardening chores are at a minimum. 

764.  A garden is made up of stories, not things.

765.  A garden is something that should not have been.  

766.  Keep moving― just like a cyclist that must keep pedaling and moving and avoiding falling down. 

771.  The will is rooted in the irrational― deeply rooted; with but a few fruits of reason in season. 

775.  The past is largely the present, give or take some novelty and some missing parts.

776.  The present often subtracts something from the past to pay the Price of the Now. 

780.  Evidence may support the pessimists' views; but optimists get to smile more.

781.  What we choose to emphasize is our realm of consciousness, the rest is a background blur. 

782.  What ought to be cannot be derived from what is the case, but a reasonable person ought not
         to ignore was is the case.  

783.   Who is this me that listens to what I say?

784.   Living is largely going along for the ride on our human body.

785.   "I" am a function of all my parts interacting with our world. 

786.   If the first man was created in the image of God, then it is obvious that God is mediocre and prone to evil.  

797.   Butterflies and bees flapping their wings don’t actually create hurricanes, but we are very thankful they
           facilitate the emergence of fruits in the billions. 

825.   Uniqueness is a very narrow corridor.

826.   I think, therefore I am a living person; dead bodies don't display thinking, just stinking.

827.   Sometimes the present alters our interpretation of the past; most often the past surrounds and infects the present. 

828.   I can admire a few great persons or heroes, but seldom have much desire to try and imitate them. 

829.   Disrespect and contempt for the body is a common trump card for spiritualists; but, our game of life does not use trump cards. 

830.   Nonsense can sometimes improve our sense and senses. 

 

 

 

This webpage work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Created by Michael P. Garofalo, Green Way Research, Vancouver, Washington © 2001-2021 CCA 4.0

 

Pragmatic Philosophy

How to Live a Good Life: Advice from Wise Persons

831.   My body gave birth to my mind, is in my mind, and my body-mind thrives in our world of lived experiences. 

832.   Objectivity is a product of our agreements, and an important feature of my imagination. 

833.   R. Buckminster-Fuller once suggested that "God is a verb, not a noun."  Which verb?  Pretending?  Storytelling?  Fantasizing?  Believing? 

834.   My consciousness is a vegetable soup, and the water in the soup is what I do. 

835.   Hearing the cat purr when we pet them gently matters more to us than whether the cat's fur is black, white, or orange. 

851.   Fear may keep some stupid people in line, but virtue for virtue's sake attracts the allegiance and support of most intelligent people. 

856.   Stupidity and shallowness are increasingly popular. 

857.   When Death grins at you, grin back; when death beckons you, run away.

858.   Thankfully, we can imagine nearly everything─ which helps prevent boredom. 

859.   A garden is a Romantic's parádeisos.

860.   The Garden of Eden is a badly painted backdrop to a lousy stage play. 

871.   By decreasing your desires you actually diversify and and increase your pleasures and satisfaction. 

872.   Serenity is often discovered in silence. 

873.   Tending a garden is often a tranquil place of mind. 

874.   Private masturbation is intense and efficient, lechery with others often wastes a lot of time and money and exposes you to diseases.  

875.   Most pleasures grow stale, become taken for granted, and provide lowering levels of satisfaction with the unneeded and excessive repetition of those pleasures. 

876.   Our actions always emerge in the reality of the future.

877.   The present is merely a fleeting moment; we actually unearth our essence in our past and create ourselves in the future.

881.  "Living Here and Now" seems meaningful when the "now" is a day, or the next few days, or a week, or a month.  

882.   Wherever you are, there you are ... so? 

883.   Learn more and chit-chat less - one secret for success. 

884.   Indeed, absolute "truth" is very hard to discover; but, some "truths" are far less substantiated, validated, and supported than others. 

885.   The grass is not greener on the other side of the fence where nobody waters.
 

886.   You can train yourself to eliminate bad habits and useless thoughts; for example, stop attending any more church services starting today.  

889.   Our understanding of "enlightenment" varies like living in Paris, Tehran, Kamakura, Pretoria, Beijing, Rio, Nashville, or Portland varies. 

890.   The City of God does not meet any of our current building codes.   

891.  The road to flourishing needs regular maintenance and repairs.

892.  Time is on your side when you are young.

893.  On Not Resisting Temptations

Test, try, experiment - within reason.
Manage your pleasures and desires.
Be open to thinking and feeling in new ways.
Sometimes ignore what other people tell you to do or not to do.
Old values are not necessarily better values.
What is "bad" in one generation may be "good" in later times.
Enjoy the pleasure of eating apples.
When someone tells you not to ask, sometimes ask and ask again.
With only one life to live - be bolder.
Don't resist the temptation to improve, to change, to grow.
Like water, enjoy going downhill in new directions.
Embrace intellectual pleasures.
Be suspicious of people who talk too much about guilt and punishment.
Some failures are inevitable, just get up and move on. 
Thinking and doing are often more advantageous than believing. 
Many people associate sexual pleasure with 'sinfulness': nonsense.
Succumb to temptations to laugh more often. 
If you can't take advantage of temptations then you are not free. 
Remember what works for you. 

894.  A Garden is a feeling. 

895.  Acknowledging that you might die today has stopped few from trying to stay alive to 80.

896.   The Yin and Yang logic of life: no and yes, true and false, soft and hard, dead or alive, past and future, deeper and wider, good and evil, closed and open.   

901.  The ground is muddiest after you have just polished your boots.

902.  More greenery here does not diminish greenery elsewhere. 

930.  Soldiers are doing a job for pay, or are forced to do so, and are often not heroes.

931.  The garden, orchard, and woodlot are all places to help us warm up. 

941.  Saying something is true does not make it true; rather we need confirmation, verification, observation,
               descriptions, logic, communal agreement, facts, pragmatic definitions, value, etc. 

942.  Philosophy proves little─but is provocative and forceful nonetheless. 

943.  Vagueness can be charming, being too literal can get boring.   

944.  My eyeglasses of language need a new prescription. 

945.  Don't force things and grow old. 

951.  The months come and go as is the Way without words.

952.  The gardener’s actions must adapt to freezing conditions.

953.  Adaptation to challenges is an essential skill. 

954.  Beliefs tend to channel the mind, wonder opens it up. 

955.  If you are seeking certainty, the search will likely be tiresome and futile.

956.  Be content with the probable and hope for the best.

960.  We assume that there are questions for which we have "correct" answers. 

961.  Persons need to grow and flourish like a productive and beautiful garden─and it takes daily work to nurture yourself.

962.  Many people are better at believing than seeing.

963.  For some sad souls life is often battle after battle, with victory a fading hope.

964.  Speaking figuratively, wandering with words, and meddling with metaphors is fun.

965.  Our minds-bodies turn blades of grass into a croquet lawn or a soccer field─a territory becomes another map.

966.  We learn to speak better by using our hands─by writing and gesturing.

968.  A leaf bud - hope visible.     

969.  One critical fact seems certain to me─everyone I know will be dead in one hundred years. 

970.  Creativity in gardening is often spurred on by destructive impulses.

971.  Buddha had the forests, I have a garden. 

972.  The past fertilizes and amplifies the present. 

973.  The Boundless is like wind over the ocean, the boundary like a knife. 

974.  Trees add new branches and new layers of bark each year─likewise we must add new knowledge
         to our settled views and grow wiser each year.

975.  Walking needs earth, space, and the walker. 

976.  Gardening gets you into the flow of enjoyment. 

977.  Some ideas are impalpable, tasteless, foul, stinking, garbage, rotten. 

979.  Your garden is a portrait of yourself.

980.  In the canvas of winter we can still find a spot of summer.   

981.  The gardener fights against Chaos, wins a few battles, but always looses the war. 

982.  There is absolutely a place for Absolutes and Ideals in our rational/logical way of choosing
         to think about our experiences. 

986.  Christians and Moslems love to lie about their own righteousness, and rant about the
         immorality of the non-believers in their fantasies.   

1001.  We sometimes trip and fall because of adjectives, e.g., a charming murderer. 

1002.  Dead bodies are dead persons, souls departed, fading memories in the next generation, lost forever
           in the waves of the past. 

1003.  The "Primordial One" gives birth, evolves, divides, converts into the Many─It prefers not being alone and loves its progeny.

1004.  The "necessary transcendental divine" just seems like too big a suitcase to carry around in my travels with cynics. 

1005.  Figure out the question, question the question, before trying to figure out the answer to the question. 

1017.  Taijiquan: mostly from the body, partially from understanding, and a lot from our intentions. 

1021.  It is events and happenings that give meaning to living amongst other things, beings, and persons. 

1022.  Some events seem baffling and unintelligible, and we mostly choose to ignore them and move on.  l

1023.  Many people prefer penicillin and pain killers over vials of holy water from tourist grottos. 

1024.  I think, therefore I am "real."  (Based on definitions and analysis - maybe? Variations on Descartes.)

1025.  When we agree upon useful guides to shared actions then our knowledge emerges. 

1026.  Only rich men, and criminal poachers, can afford to murder endangered species;
           in violation of deep ecology principles. 

1031.  Virtual travel via books and videos are sufficient for my level of income and savings. 

1032.  It is impractical to try to make "sense" of everything─loose ends are often filed away in the closed cabinet of mysteries and magic. 

1033.  Artists rearrange new objects and intellectuals rearrange old words. 

1034.  To put a bigger hat on an idea─Capitalize its Key Words.

1035.  Curious About "Nothing, Non-Being, Nothingness, Nada, Ninguno"?

"I have nothing to say," actually says at lot.
Organic beings give birth to offspring, while "Nothing" seems rather to point to the infertile, impotent, childless─ the Dark Enigma reversed. 
"Nothing matters to me anymore" is a very bad sign of one's state of mind.
"There is nothing left to eat" has frightening consequences, and we can't eat nothing.
An empty cup is easy to understand, the Void or Emptiness are a mystery─indeed, dark enigmas. 923
When we die our bodies are transformed into smelly rotting corpses over bones; but centuries away from nothing. 
Biology has profitably and systematically explained reproduction, and "Nothing" is not included as an explanatory premise or hypothesis. 
There is nothing behind the facts; but, we love to imagine creating something out of nothing.  177
That "there is nothing on the table" does not imply that "nothing" is a kind of something like a salt shaker.
Our ideas appear and disappear like comets and clouds in the empty sky.
I'm like an empty bowl, something the world puts experiences into.  700
The ceaseless flow of events in which our consciousness is aware of and partially remembers seems to just appear out of nothing. 
Beings are born and later die, akin to going from something to nothing; however, going from nothing to something is alien
     to our practical understandings and our Western ontological assumptions.
Sitting in a garden and doing nothing is high art everywhere.  49 
Maybe it is a Bright (blue, green, yellow) Enigma rather that a Dark (black, brown, red) Enigma?
Metaphors are a delightful, tricky, clever, ingenious ways of pumping iron with words. 
"Nothing" is a temporary place holder for something useful that is absent.
The dangers of dwindling, less, little, limited, lost, all spiraling towards nothing.
The first taste of "emptiness" satisfies; thereafter, we find plants to tend.  257
Because something is absent does not imply that it is nothing.
Please refer to the Tao Te Ching, Chapters #1 and #40.     
Don't forget, there are particles and energies; and energies, sometimes invisible to our eyes, also fill up the Universe. 
Take the bicycle completely apart.  What do you have?  Yes, a pile of parts; not nothing. 
The empty garden is already full.  24 
We can't think well reasonably or in practical ways without using negation, not, no, missing, gone, untrue, false. 
Nuclear physicists have talked some about unique particles generated from nothing, or at least Fritjof Capra did in 1975. 

My life experiences and my amazement/wonder/infatuation with the the myraid World of Somethings
can proceed quite satisfactorily with a convenience belief in the assumption that:
the Source, the Origin, of these Somethings:
it is likely that Somethings produce Somethings, and it is unlikely but possible that Nothing (Wu, Mu) produces Somethings.
Whatever, I will leave these knotty ontological/cosmological/metaphysical questions-answers aside, invoke phenomenological epoché,
turn off the talking/thinking/ruminating mind and get on with living without the Words. 

 

Be cautious of and don’t get confused by a word that is used as an adjective, verb, and noun, e.g., empty. 
Often, emptying out and giving away items is a liberating act, i.e., less is better. 
Better half full than empty.
Eat until 70% full, leave some room in the gut.
Minimalist living is a fine art, but poverty is nothing to cheer about. 
Emptying gets closer to nothing, but that limit is unreachable. 
The first taste of "emptiness" satisfies; thereafter, we find plants to tend.  257 
Some persons with an “empty mind” probably really need ongoing life support teams: a devoted spouse,
    a loving friend or relative, good Samaritans, a sangha, church or commune, charitable support
    workers, memory care hospitals, governmental services ... 
Feelings of emptiness and meaninglessness had better soon pass.
An empty cup is easy to understand, the Void or Emptiness are a mystery─indeed, dark enigmas. 923 
Many opinions are insincere and empty of meaning. 
Some containers are not filled or occupied, but the container and air remains; complete emptiness is a chimera. 
Yes, we are sans-soul, without an everlasting spirit-essence, Empty at the core; but, without Everything that
    our bodies are Interdependent-With we would be truly nothing. 

1037.  Yes, there were "Truths" back then that have passed on to the Nirvana of Falsehoods.    

1038.  It is best (practical and time saving), to distance yourself from people who constantly complain, are uninformed, delight in lots of gossip, judge others too often, don’t have a sense of humor, are close-minded, are environmentally irresponsible, believe aggressively in some one true religion, are TV addicts, are only money-minded, want to dominate others, don’t respect or appreciate you, delight in arguing, are overly needy adults, don’t listen, are crude and obnoxious, are dumb from drugs, don't obey the rules of reasoning and logic, are gun zealots, racists, criminals, women haters, etc., etc.  Distancing yourself from these kinds of persons and their negative influences will enable you to flourish and enjoy your life. 

1039.  The use of Taoist classics, commentaries, and scholarly resources may lead us into the impenetrable thickets of Words Gone Wild,
or out into the flat fertile valleys of intellectual understanding via the Words of wise others so that we can begin cultivating the
fine arts of just observing not describing, of seeing without the sayings, of hearing without the speaking, of being immersed in
pure presence, of being at full attention here and now, of enjoying things just as they are as so, of wonder and gratitude for what
is given, of acceptance of alternative views, of being decent, of finding beauty, and of doing nothing profitably without fuss. 

1040.  Prime You Mind with Guiding Rhymes

1060. 

1061.   Shit ... I was supposed to file the blade on the opposite side?

1062.   I garden; therefore, I water. 

1063.   "Hone your hunches, Jump, then backtrack to blaze a reliable trail to your conclusion." 
          -  Verena Huber-Dyson

1064.   "The garden is a metaphor for life, and gardening is a symbol of the spiritual path." 
          - Larry Dossey

1065.   The new sentence emerges: from the marriage of us and others, imitation, reading, objectives, 
          deadlines, lectures, study, idea play, and work.

____________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________

Gardening, Plants, Nature
Quotes from Pulling Onions by Michael P. Garofalo

A callused palm and dirty fingernails precede a Green Thumb.  7
Gardens are demanding pets.  1
Beauty is the Mistress, the gardener Her slave.  92 
Sitting in a garden and doing nothing is high art everywhere.  49 
The Uhr Spell is "Abundant Fertility."  18 
Despite the gardener's best intentions, Nature will improvise.  54 
Wishes are like seeds, few ever develop into something.  22 
Gardening often straightens the body and aligns the spirit.  47 
Gardening is the right sport for a lifetime of pleasures.  344  
Like a garden, the room for self-improvement grows larger each year.  35 
Your greatest discoveries in the yard often come by accident.  15 
The empty garden is already full.  24 
Always leave extra time for unraveling the hose.  41 
Come to your senses by gardening today.  475
Spring green opens up one's heart smile.  1011
When all the chores are done, the avid gardener will invent some new ones.  42 
A garden recreates itself daily; we seldom step in the same garden thrice.  51 
When gardening, the ordinary can become the extraordinary.  341 
One's garden is always reaching upward for the bees, birds, clouds, sun, stars ....  474
Happiness often creeps up on you unexpectedly while you are working diligently in the garden.  342 
To become a better gardener you need to become a handyman─ one who can use his hands in new and clever ways.  817 
Gardens are not inherently meaningful in many ways; but, making a garden and caring for it creates meaningfulness.  473
Mother Nature is always pregnant.  702
Chaos breaks its own rules to allow Order to play.  706
The best things in life are more expensive than you think.  655
Your pocket knife will be its dullest at just the right time.  332 
Garbage In, Compost Out.  649 
A flower needs roots; beauty of society of minds.  241 
When gardening, look up more often.  647

The Spirit of Gardening     Months and Seasons     Cloud Hands Blog     Neo-Paganism  

-  Michael P. Garofalo, Pulling Onions   Over 1,000 Sayings, Quips, Reflections, Observations

Time, Cycles, History
Quotes from Pulling Onions by Michael P. Garofalo

A garden recreates itself daily; we seldom step in the same garden thrice.  51
We don't erase the past, we just build more and bigger blackboards.  1008
The present is made from the past.  991 
Time creeps, walks, runs and flies - it is all about moving things.  698
Chaos breaks its own rules to allow Order to play.  706

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-  Michael P. Garofalo, Pulling Onions   Over 1,000 Sayings, Quips, Reflections, Observations

Knowing, Reasoning, Thinking,
Quotes from Pulling Onions by Michael P. Garofalo

The Rule is: there are probably exceptions to the rule, there are borderline cases where the use of the rule is debated,
  and the rule better work most of the time.  997 
Some ideas are impalpable, tasteless, foul, stinking, garbage, rotten.  977
"Mas o menos" is often quite sufficient.  989 
Nonsense can sometimes improve our sense and senses.  830
A working hypothesis is far better than a belief.  657

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-  Michael P. Garofalo, Pulling Onions   Over 1,000 Sayings, Quips, Reflections, Observations

Body-Mind, Soma-Aesthetics, Moving and Being, Personal Development
Quotes from Pulling Onions by Michael P. Garofalo

The longer you follow the path of a habit the harder it becomes to self-correct, change course, and move in a new direction.  816  
Releasing our obsessive thoughts requires muscular intervention, getting to work, and refuting our false assumptions.  907

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-  Michael P. Garofalo, Pulling Onions   Over 1,000 Sayings, Quips, Reflections, Observations

Ethics, Morals, Society, Values, Personal Choices
Quotes from Pulling Onions by Michael P. Garofalo

"We don't do that here" suffices as good behavioral or moral advice for newcomers.  1009
The best things in life are more expensive than you think.  655

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-  Michael P. Garofalo, Pulling Onions   Over 1,000 Sayings, Quips, Reflections, Observations

Religion, Gods, and Theology
Quotes from Pulling Onions by Michael P. Garofalo

Absolutes squirm beneath realities.  9
It is better to cultivate spiritual fruits than religious nuts.  523
I believe in "God"; I just spell It "Fiction."  756   
When the Divine knocks, don't send a prophet to the door.  48
Dogmatists are less useful than dogs.  711
Gardens are more useful than churches.  787 
The City of God does not meet any of our current building codes.  890 
God and I get along quite well, he ignores me all the time and I ignore him.  845
Perfection can be the opponent of betterment.  788
We did not come from dust, nor shall we return to dust, nor are we dust in the wind.  23
There is not much to say about the "Unknown."  3  
R. Buckminster-Fuller once suggested that "God is a verb, not a noun."  Which verb?  Pretending?  Storytelling?  Fantasizing?  Believing?  833
In general, be more specific.  79 
If the first man was created in the image of God, then it is obvious that God is mediocre and prone to evil.  786
Nothing grows in Hell.  134
The fear of the Lord is a corner stone of indoctrination and the beginning of the end of wisdom.  850 
After understanding thousands of the details, a common variety god is really quite superfluous.  725 
The root illusion is a belief in that which does not change.  451 
Roundness is the Holy Shape.  629
God may be very smart, but he is a poor communicator.  779
There is absolutely a place for Absolutes and Ideals in our rational/logical way of choosing to think about our experiences.  982
We already live in the Garden of Eden, but we now have to work to keep it growing.  136
God may have created the first garden, but, typical of Him, He got bored with trying to keep it up and make it better.  149
Say a prayer for a good harvest; but don't forget to weed and water.  288
The Bible is morally inconsistent and often morally reprehensible.  842
I never found God in my garden, but goddesses and gods and faeries dance everywhere.  492
Yes, God and Allah are both still dead, yet plenty is still not permitted and virtues and ideals still persist.  330   
Before you swear at the overgrown ivy, beware of Dionysus.  602 
The Garden of Eden is a badly painted backdrop to a lousy stage play.  860 
Even a god cannot listen to a billion prayers a day.  412
Beware of the man who speaks of God only as a father or a son.  573 
The real "miracle" is cause and effect.  584
Christians and Moslems love to lie about their own righteousness, and rant about the immorality of the non-believers in their fantasies.  986
The "eternal truths" are sometimes clearly false.  430
Have you noticed that people praying close their eyes?  People, please open your eyes and think instead.  444
If God existed it would be necessary to have a Goddess because God is just to lazy and incompetent.  471
If God gave us technology, why did he wait so long to give us a box of matches or solar power panels.  454 
What?   Another damn Garden of Eden analogy!  476
The seed idea for "God" is springtime.  596 
A God who is understood is really misunderstood ... actually no God at all.  598 
Variety, Creativity and Fertility are the Songs of the Great Goddess.  509
Hell is a silent dark world where nothing grows.  512  
Even Allah cannot alter the past; but our knowledge of the past changes each year.  549   
Is the the God of scriptures the Absolute?  Absolutely not!  996
Stop looking for the Green Man and He will appear.  601 
The gardener is a priestess, the garden her temple and followers, gardening her liturgy.  603 
Religion is intimate with awe, anxiety, fear, danger, and death.  608 
Avoid dogmatists, they often end up treating you like a dog.   623 
What good is All Powerful and All Wise "God" or "Allah" who can supposedly count every hair on your head, but can't find
a house for a homeless family, stop terrorists, get rid of the alcoholic thief next door, or save your citrus trees from frostbite?   681
Mother Nature is always pregnant.  702
It is best to shut one's mouth in face of the sacred.  719   
Create your own garden, the god's certainly won't.  736 
That something is eternal is unverifiable; it is one premise.  746  
If there is a "Divine Lawgiver," then He/She/It seems a rather poor judge and inconsistent.  978
Ordinary reality is good enough for most sensible people; a "higher" calling is answered by few.  759 
Don't kid yourself: seeing is not necessarily believing.  761 
To many the sun is a god and the earth is a goddess; and, our imaginations are boundless.  762 
To save some time, don't let them get a foot in the door.  795 
I may not be able to precisely define religious nonsense, but I know it when I hear it.  791 
I think, therefore I am a living person; dead bodies don't display thinking, just stinking.  826 
Disrespect and contempt for the body is a common trump card for spiritualists; but, our game of life does not use trump cards.  829 
Is the the God of scriptures the Absolute?  Absolutely not!  996 
A sure path to the perversion of truth is to make it a belief.  841 
The Bible is morally inconsistent and often morally reprehensible.  842
God is not dead─ he never existed in the first place.  887 
"Just believe" is the weakest argument for adopting an opinion.  888 
Seeing the "Big Picture" is just viewing a pleasant painting created by your imagination.  846
I have faith that science will help explain our world; but, I don't "believe in" or worship science.  908
Some questions just dissolve─when our spell is broken.  921 
Spinoza's God was Nature─by definition.  937 
Rather than seeking an answer we sometimes need to stop asking the question.  938 
I am not a marionette in the Hands of Deus (or Zeus, Yahweh, Allah, God, Shiva, Coyote, Great Father, etc.)  940 
Beliefs tend to channel the mind, wonder opens it up.  953 
If you are seeking certainty, the search will likely be tiresome and futile.  955 

"Mas o menos" is often quite sufficient.  989
Be content with the probable and hope for the best.  956 

-  Michael P. Garofalo, Pulling Onions   Over 1,000 Sayings, Quips, Reflections, Observations

Michael P. Garofalo's Religious Views       Philosophy       Virtue Ethics       How to Live a Good Life: Advice from Wise Persons

"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own─a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty.  Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.  the idea is a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive.  I believe in Spinoza's God, revealed in the orderly harmony of what exists.
-  Albert Einstein, 1955, found in "The Portable Atheist."  

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A Collection Growing to Over 3,800 Quotes, Arranged by 250 Topics
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Over 3,800 Quotations, Poems, Sayings, Quips, One-Liners, Clichés, Quotes, and Insights
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