Growing with Growing Things

We are having our plant sale this week ~ and next week. The greenhouse is overflowing with plants: a variety of herbs (including parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme), tomato and lettuce starts, hanging baskets, ground cover, echinacea, lavender, irises, lilies, snapdragons, and lots of succulents. The sales at the greenhouse itself are busy, but fairly simple and straight-forward affairs. We are finishing up our sales at our district office tomorrow. It'll be the third time we have taken van loads of plants there to sell. It's a lot of work. The first day went spectacularly; the second not so well.

I don't consider myself much of a gardener. I've learned some over the past two years, and there is much more that I know I don't know. I am fascinated by the amount of love and care others put into the greenhouse... and by what it produces under their watch.

So ~ like the reader/writer I am, I found quotes that struck me as I continued to marvel at the lushness of the season.

The first is from Marcus Tullius Cicero:
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

Ha! Certainly something I believe. Without the library, I'd be a bit more lost. The idea of sitting in the garden and reading sounds marvelous.

The second is from Russell Page:
If you wish to make anything grow, you must understand it, and understand it in a very real sense. 'Green fingers' are a fact, and a mystery only to the unpracticed. But green fingers are the extensions of a verdant heart.

Whew! Under that one, I guess I could be in trouble. I don't have 'green fingers' ~ or at least not to any great extent. I'm in the process of practicing the use of them.... we'll see how that turns out.

The last is from Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Nature never hurries. Atom by atom, little by little she achieves her work.

Here's one that reminds me that breathing and being patient may pay off in the end. Nature is a She ~ a creatrix who wants others to appreciate her handiwork. And to acknowledge the beauty and wonder shining through. I think I do little with gardening and plants right now because I don't feel or think I have the time to sink into the silence to watch and let the garden companion me.

Do you have a garden? What do you grow? How do you feel when you are in it? Can you slow down enough to be a good observer? What can you do to improve that?