Close to the Gates a spacious Garden
lies,
From the Storms defended and inclement Skies;
Four Acres was the allotted Space of Ground,
Fenc'd with a green Enclosure all around.
Tall thriving Trees confessed the fruitful Mold:
The reddening Apple ripens here to Gold,
Here the blue Fig with luscious Juice overflows,
With deeper Red the full Pomegranate glows,
The Branch here bends beneath the weighty Pear,
and verdant Olives flourish round the Year.
- Homer, Odyssey, circa 850 B.C.
Alexander Pope translation 1725
For thirty years I have looked for a
swordmaster.
Many times leaves fell, new ones sprouted.
One glimpse of peach blossoms -
now no more doubts, just this.
- Lingyun Zhiqin's enlightenment poem, as retold by Zen Master
Dogen
What wond'rous life is this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach,
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Insnar'd with flow'rs, I fall on grass.
- Andrew Marvell, 1621 - 1678
I Welcome Your Comments, Ideas and Suggestions
Amazingly enough, almost all the fruits grown
in home gardens, from strawberries
to apricots, are members of the same plant family, Rosaceae, along with such
decorative favorites as roses, mountain ash, flowering quince .... Worldwide,
there are about 3,400 members of this very ancient plant group,
which exhibit primitive characteristics.
- Diane E. Bilderback
The sun, with all those planets
revolving around it and dependent on it, can
still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.
- Galileo
In an orchard there should be enough
to eat, enough to lay up,
enough to be stolen, and enough to rot on the ground.
- James Boswell, 1740-1795
Why aren't bananas lonely?
They hang out in bunches.
Love is a fruit in season at all
times, and within reach of every hand.
- Mother Teresa
Thou didst create the deserts,
mountains, and forests,
but I produced the orchards, gardens, and groves.
- Turkmeni folk song
Wishing to be friends is quick work,
but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.
- Aristotle
Write me down
As one who loved poetry,
And persimmons.
- Shiki
This Halloween night, we cut and eat,
Fuyu persimmons, firm and sweet.
- Mike Garofalo, Cuttings
- October
When you're green, your growing. When
you're ripe, you rot.
- Ray Kroc
Wyth a saw thou schalt the tre kytte
And with a knyfe smouth make hytte
Klene a-tweyne the stok of the tre
Where-yn that they graffe schall be
Make thy Kyttyng' of thy graffe
By-twyne the newe & the olde staffe.
- John Gardener, The Feate of Gardening, 1440
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
- A. E. Housman, A
Shropshire Lad, 1887
Thought is the blossom, language the
bud, action the fruit behind.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Walls enriched with Fruit-trees
and faced with a covering
of their leafy extensions; I should rather have said hung with
different Pieces of Nature's noblest Tapestry.
- James Hervey
Like a prune, you are not getting any
better looking, but you are getting sweeter.
- N. D. Stice
Courage is not the towering oak that sees storms come and go;
it is the fragile blossom that opens in the snow.
- Alice M. Swaim
Sex and Desire - Quotes for Gardeners
Unless a tree has borne blossoms in
spring,
you will vainly look for fruit on it in autumn.
- Charles Hare
He that would have fruit must climb the tree.
- Thomas Fuller
When you enter the land and plant any kind of fruit tree,
regard its fruit
as forbidden. For three years you are to consider it forbidden; it must
not be eaten. In the fourth year all its fruit will be holy, an offering of
praise to the Lord. But in the fifth year you may eat its fruit. In this
way your harvest will be increased. I am the Lord your God.
- Bible, Leviticus 19:23-25
Why did the kiwifruit go out with the
prune?
Because it couldn't get a date.
The fallen hazel-nuts,
Stripped late of their green sheaths,
The grapes, red-purple,
Their berries
Dripping with wine,
Pomegranates already broken,
And shrunken fig,
And quinces untouched,
I bring thee as offering.
- Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961, Priapus: Keeper-of-Orchards
Anytime the perfume of orange and
lemon groves wafts in the window;
the human body has to feel suffused with a languorous well-being.
- Frances Mayes, Bella Tuscany
The pecan (Carya illinoensis) is native to the Americas and naturally distributed in the Mississippi Valley and the river valleys of Texas. The Indians introduced pecans to the white man by trading for tools and trinkets. In this way, the traders moved the pecan from its native range to the eastern states. The first pecan nursery was established in 1772 and from this small beginning, pecan production has grown into a multimillion dollar industry in Florida and South Georgia. - The Farm Store
George Fenwick gave the seal of
Connecticut to the colony when they
purchased Saybrook Fort in 1644. The seal represents a vineyard of
fifteen grape vines and a hand issuing from clouds holds a label with
the motto: Quitranstulit sustinet.
Gay Gardening -
Connecticut
Quotes for Gardeners
A Collection Growing to Over 2,700 Quotes Arranged by 130 Topics
Quotes, Sayings, Proverbs, Poetry, Maxims, Quips, Cliches, Adages
Compiled by Michael P. Garofalo
In the nut, nothing is lost, except perhaps the noise it
makes when breaking.
- World
Wide Walnut
In the cherry
blossom's shade
there's no such thing
as a stranger.
- Issa
The most beautiful fig may
contain a worm.
- Proverb from Zululand
Every thought is a seed.
If you plant Crab apples don't count on
harvesting Golden Delicious.
I'm Charley's aunt from Brazil -
where the nuts come from.
- Brandon Thomas, 1856-1914
Why did the strawberry call 911?
It was in a jam.
September fruits are on the bough
And the bright apple is king of all,
Red, golden, russet - brimming now,
Ripe for the picking before they fall.
- David Squire
No man in the world has more courage
than the man
who can stop after eating one peanut.
- Channing Pollack
A strawberry blossom will not sweeten
dry bread.
- Buganda Proverb
The space
between the leaves
is full of sunlight.
At the sharp edge,
no longer crowded
with past and future,
fruits ripen on the lemon tree
in the silence
rising
from the morning air.
- Ok-Koo Kand Grosjean, Garden
We can hold back neither the coming
of the flowers
nor the downward rush of the stream;
sooner or later, everything comes to its fruition.
- Loy Ching-Yuen
winter dusk
the rhythm of her knife
chopping fruit and nuts
- Elizabeth St. Jacques, Poetry in the Light
Fruit should pay for the welfare
of leaves.
- Yiddish Proverb
The true meaning of life is to plant
trees,
under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
- Nelson Henderson
And the fruits will outdo what the
flowers have promised.
- Francois de Malherbe
She had only to stand in the orchard,
to put her hand on a little crab tree
and look up at the apples, to make you feel the goodness
of planting and tending and harvesting at last.
- Willa Cather
The nut doesn't reveal the tree it
contains.
- Proverb from ancient Egypt
There is nothing in the world more peaceful than
apple-leaves with an early moon.
- Alice Meynell
I think that if you shake the tree,
you ought to be
around when the fruit falls to pick it up.
- Mary Cassatt
And on the banks, on both sides of
the river, there will grow all kinds
of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither nor their fruit fail, but
they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them
flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their
leaves for healing.
- Ezekiel 47:12
Here's to three, old apple-tree;
Hence thou mayst bud, and whence thou mayst blow,
And whence thou mayst apples bear enow!
Hats full! Caps full!
Bushel, bushel sacks full!
And my pockets full, too! Huzza!
- Traditional saying
Matthew 3:10 - And now also the
axe is laid unto the root of the trees:
therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit
is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
Luke 3:9 - And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees:
every tree therefore which bringeth not forth good fruit
is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
Do not be afraid to go out on a limb
... That's where the fruit is.
Anonymous
All the seasons run their race
In this quiet resting-place;
Peach, and apricot, and fig
Here will ripen, and grow big;
Here is store and overplus -
More had not Alcinous!
- Austin Dobson, Garden Song, 1895
God gives the nuts but he does not
crack them.
German Proverb
Little by little grow the
bananas.
- Proverb from the Congo
He who plants a tree
Plants a hope.
- Lucy Larcom (1826-1893), Plant a Tree
Fig tree, how long it's been full meaning for
me,
the way you almost entirely omit to flower
and into the seasonably-resolute fruit
uncelebratedly thrust your purest secret.
Like the tube of a fountain, your bent bough drives the sap
downwards and up: and it leaps from its sleep, scarce waking,
into the joy of its sweetest achievement.
- Rainer Marie Rilke, Sixth Elegy
A fig for a care, a fig for a
woe!
- John Heywood, 1497-1580
There is peace in the garden.
Peace and results.
- Ruth Stout
Anyone can count the number of seeds
in an apple,
but only God can count the number of apples in a seed.
- Robert H. Schuller
He that planteth a tree is a servant
of God, he provideth
a kindness for many generations, and faces that
he hath not seen shall bless him.
- Henry Van Dyke (1852-1933)
Fast Ripe, Fast Rotten.
Japanese Proverb
The better the fruit, the more wasps
to eat it.
German Proverb
Great talents are the most lovely and
often the most dangerous fruits
on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender
twigs that are easily snapped off.
-C. G. Jung
The three daughters of Hesperus, the
Hesperides, fled to Italy from Africa.
Aegle took her citrons to the country near Lake Garda,
Arethusa bore her lemons to Liguria, and Hesperthusa
sowed seed of oranges in the Campania Felix.
- J. B. Ferrarius, 1646, A fable
The flavors of the peach and the
apricot are not lost
from generation to generation. Neither are they
transmitted by book learning.
- Ezra Pound
How do you compare apples and
oranges?
By their nutritional value.
- Marshall Elizer
Now I am in the garden at the back .
. . a very preserve of butterflies
as I remember it, with a high fence, and a gate . . . where the fruit
clusters on the trees, riper and richer than fruit has ever been since,
in any other garden, and where my mother gathers some in a basket while
I stand by, bolting furtive gooseberries, and trying to look unnerved.
- Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
A little gluttony as regards to fruit
is so natural!
As to myself, I cannot honestly deny, and therefore frankly
confess, that I sympathize with our mother Eve.
- Cornelia J. Randolph, The Parlor Garden, 1884
Woodcutter.
Cut my shadow from me.
Free me from the torment
of being without fruit.
Why was I born among mirrors?
Day goes round and round me.
The night copies me
in all its stars.
I want to live without my reflection.
And then let me dream
that ants and thistledown
are my leaves and my parrots.
- F. Garcia Lorca, The Song of the Barren Orange Tree
Flowers - Quotes for Gardeners
When life hands you a lemon, say,
"Oh yeah, I like lemons. What else ya got?"
- Henry Rollins.
Alive with bees ...
radiant pink
peach
blossoms
- Mike Garofalo, Cuttings
Several ripe persimmons
Left on the branches;
Gray clouds come and go.
- Santoka Taneda, 1882-1940
Mountain Tasting, Translated by John Stevens
Words are like leaves; and where they
most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.
- Alexander Pope, 1688-1744
O lovely
apple!
beautifully and completely
rotten,
hardly a contour marred --
perhaps a little
shriveled at the top but that
aside perfect
in every detail!
- William Carlos Williams, Perfection, 1944
I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own
where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat
of the day climbed
up into the healing shadow of the woods.
Better than any argument is to
rise at dawn and pick
dew-wet red berries in a cup.
- Wendell Berry
The true Southern watermelon is a
boon apart, and not to be mentioned with
commoner things. It is chief of this world's luxuries, king by the grace of God
over all the fruits of the earth. When one has tasted it, he knows what the
angels eat. It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took;
we know it because she repented.
- Mark Twain
Vegetables - Quotes for Gardeners
The nut of this tree is hung high
aloft, wrapped in a silk wrapper, which is enclosed
in a case of sole leather, which again is packed in a mass of shock absorbing, vermin
proof pulp, sealed up in a waterproof, ironwood case, and finally cased in a
vegetable porcupine of spines, almost impregnable. There is no nut so protected; there is
no nut
in our woods to compare with it as food.
What is a
Chesnut
A thousand trees are seen towards
heaven rising,
With beautiful and sweetly-scented apples;
The orange, wearing on its lovely fruit
The colour Daphne carried in her hair;
Bent low, nay almost fallen to the ground,
The citron, heavy with is yellow load;
And, last, the graceful lemon with its fruit
Of pleasant smell and shaped like virgins' breasts.
- Camoes, 1497, Journal of his Voyages to India
Yellow melon flowers
Crawl beneath the withered peach-trees;
A date-palm throws its heavy fronds of steel
Against the scoured metallic sky.
- John Gould Fletcher, 1886-1950, The Windmills
Ripening grapes in the summer sun - reason
enough to plod ahead.
Where are the fig blossoms? Exceptions to every rule.
Fruits are the practice of seeds.
Some pleasures lick, chew, savor and swallow us.
Promises of fruit being "Sweet" and "Juicy" will sell seeds, and much
much more.
Does a plum tree with no fruit have Buddha Nature? Whack!!
Planting bare-root fruit trees is a paradigm case of optimism.
In the right place at the right time, tomato worms on tomato vines.
- Mike Garofalo, Pulling Onions: The Quips and
Maxims of a Gardener
Don't shake the tree when the pears
fall off themselves.
Slovakian Proverb
Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard
white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night.
- Robert Frost
In this sequestered nook how sweet
To sit upon my orchard seat
And birds and flowers once more to greet
- William Wordsworth
Trees and Shrubs at Our Home in Red Bluff, California
The era of wild apples will soon be
over. I wander through old
orchards of great extent, now all gone to decay, all of native fruit
which for the most part went to the cider mill. But since the
temperance reform and the general introduction of grafted fruit,
no wild apples, such as I see everywhere in deserted pastures, and
where the woods have grown up among them, are set out. I fear
that he who walks over these hills a century hence will not know
the pleasure of knocking off wild apples.
- Henry David Thoreau, Journal, November 16,
1850
References, Links, Reading
Apricots: California Apricot Council
The Backyard Berry Book: A Hands-On Guide to Growing Berries, Brambles, and Vine Fruit in the Home Garden. By Stella Otto. Otto Graphics, 1995. 288 pages. ISBN: 0963452061.
Fruit Trees at Our Home in Red Bluff
Grapes: North Carolina Grapes and Wines
Grapes: Grape Talk
Grapes: Smart Wine
Grapes: Wine Guide
Rodale's Successful Organic Gardening: Fruits and Berries. By Susan McClure. Rodale Press, 1996.
More Quotes
for
Gardeners
Spirituality and Concerns of the Soul
Simplicity
and the Simple Life
Pulling Onions
Quips, Whimsey and Observations by Michael P.
Garofalo
Haiku Poetry - Links and References
Cliches for Gardeners and Farmers
The History of Gardening
Timeline
From Ancient Times to the 20th Century
Quotes
for Gardeners
Quotes, Sayings, Proverbs, Poetry, Maxims, Quips,
Cliches, Adages, Wisdom
A Collection Growing to Over 2,700 Quotes, Arranged by 130 Topics
Many of the Documents Include Recommended Readings and Internet Links.
Compiled by Michael P. Garofalo
Distributed on the Internet by Michael P. Garofalo
I Welcome Your Comments, Ideas,
Contributions, and Suggestions
E-mail Mike Garofalo in Red Bluff, California
A Short Biography of Mike Garofalo
Fruit - Quotes for Gardeners.
Version 4.7.
Cuttings by Michael P. Garofalo
The History of Gardening Timeline
Cloud Hands: Taijiquan and Qigong
Valley Spirit Journal by Michael P. Garofalo
Pulling Onions by Michael P. Garofalo
Valley Spirit Photography Gallery