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“Trolls have 5,400 words for rocks and one for vegetation. "Oograah" means everything from moss to giant redwoods. The way trolls see it, if you can't eat it, it's not worth naming it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

“The plants in the garden - the aloes, the almond tree, the rose tree and the iris - were afraid of her. The flowers withered under her breath and the touch of her hand was leprous for the leaves. The plants whose growth is belief, whose breathing is hope, whose immobility is confidence and whose calyx is prayer, the plants who kept watch into the night, hated this women with the secret force of stars.”
― Hendrik Cramer

“Roses climbed the shed, entwined with dark purple clematis, leaves as glossy as satin. There were no thorns. Patience's cupboard was overflowing with remedies, and the little barn was often crowded with seekers. The half acre of meadow was wild with cosmos and lupine, coreopsis, and sweet William. Basil, thyme, coriander, and broad leaf parsley grew in billowing clouds of green; the smell so fresh your mouth watered and you began to plan the next meal. Cucumbers spilled out of the raised beds, fighting for space with the peas and beans, lettuce, tomatoes, and bright yellow peppers.
The cart was righted out by the road and was soon bowed under glass jars and tin pails of sunflowers, zinnias, dahlias, and salvia. Pears, apples, and out-of-season apricots sat in balsa wood baskets in the shade, and watermelons, some with pink flesh, some with yellow, all sweet and seedless, lined the willow fence.”
― Ellen Herrick, The Sparrow Sisters

“Education will teach you ephemeral things. God will teach you wonders.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, The Book of Maxims, Poems and Anecdotes

“Yorkshire's autumn was as great a gift as Yorkshire's summer. I loved watching the rusting of the leaves while the dales mellowed to shades of ochre, and rose hips and blackberries grew deliciously fat on their branches. The morning mists were mystical and magical to me, and the rose-glow of the evening sun lent the sky a hypnotic light that matched any Cape Town sunset.”
― Hazel Gaynor, The Cottingley Secret

“The greenhouse was made entirely of glass. Its ceiling reached five stories high, tall enough to fit a variety of fruit-bearing trees and vines. Butterflies flitted between sparkling flowers. Honeybees collected pollen for their hive, which conveniently drip honey right into glass jars. And watermelons, root beer melons, and orangeade melons grew along trellises.”
― Suzanne Selfors, Once Upon A Pet : A Collection of Little Pet Stories

“The Sparrow Sisters' roses still bloomed on New Year's Day, their scent rich and warm even when snow weighted their petals closed. When customers came down the rutted road to the small eighteenth-century barn where the sisters worked, they marveled at the jasmine that twined through the split-rail fence, the perfume so intense they could feel it in their mouths. As they paid for their purchases, they wondered (vaguely, it must be said, for the people of Granite Point knew not to think too hard about the Sisters) how it was that clematis and honeysuckle climbed the barn in November and the morning glories bloomed all day. The fruit trees were so fecund that the peaches hung on the low branches, surrounded by more blossoms, apples and pears ripened in June and stayed sweet and fresh into December. Their Italian fig trees were heavy with purple teardrop fruit only weeks after they were planted. If you wanted a tomato so ripe the juice seemed to move beneath the skin, you needed only to pick up a punnet at the Nursery.”
― Ellen Herrick, The Sparrow Sisters

“Scrubby evergreen bushes released a strong scent of resin and honey; forests of pine gave way to gentle south-facing vineyards disturbed only by the ululation of early summer cicadas. Sitting up tall on the seat, she craned around eagerly to see what plants thrived naturally.
It was a wild and romantic place, Laurent de Fayols had written, the whole island once bought as a wedding gift to his wife by a man who had made his fortune in the silver mines of Mexico. One of three small specks in the Mediterranean known as the Golden Isles, after the oranges, lemons, and grapefruit that glowed like lamps in their citrus groves.
There were few reference works in English that offered information beyond superficial facts about the island, and those she had managed to find were old. The best had been published in 1880, by a journalist called Adolphe Smith. Ellie had been struck by the loveliness of his "description of the most Southern Point of the French Riviera":


'The island is divided into seven ranges of small hills, and in the numerous valleys thus created are walks sheltered from every wind, where the umbrella pines throw their deep shade over the path and mingle their balsamic odor with the scent of the thyme, myrtle and the tamarisk.”
― Deborah Lawrenson, The Sea Garden

“John scrambled up and down the terraces and banks, hunting out the secret breaks in the thickets or crawling through hollows woven from sharp-spined stems. Blackberries lured him into sun-pricked chambers. Old byways closed and new ones opened, drifts of nettles surging forward then dying back. The sun beat down until the grass on the green parched. But on the high slopes the rank stems sprang up as lush as ever. Springs ran beneath the turf, his mother told him. Enough water to fill a river.
Together they pulled peppery watercress from the edges of marshy puddles and grubbed up tiny sweet carrots, dark purple under the dusty earth. Clover petals yielded honey-beads and jellylike mallow seeds savored of nuts. Tiny strawberries sheltered under ragged leaves and sweet blackberries swelled behind palisades of finger-pricking thorns.”
― Lawrence Norfolk, John Saturnall's Feast

“Gian Pero Frau, one of the most important characters in the supporting cast surrounding S'Apposentu, runs an experimental farm down the road from the restaurant. His vegetable garden looks like nature's version of a teenager's bedroom, a rebellious mess of branches and leaves and twisted barnyard wire. A low, droning buzz fills the air. "Sorry about the bugs," he says, a cartoonish cloud orbiting his head.
But beneath the chaos a bloom of biodynamic order sprouts from the earth. He uses nothing but dirt and water and careful observation to sustain life here. Every leaf and branch has its place in this garden; nothing is random. Pockets of lettuce, cabbage, fennel, and flowers grow in dense clusters together; on the other end, summer squash, carrots, and eggplant do their leafy dance. "This garden is built on synergy. You plant four or five plants in a close space, and they support each other. It might take thirty or forty days instead of twenty to get it right, but the flavor is deeper." (There's a metaphor in here somewhere, about his new life Roberto is forging in the Sardinian countryside.)
"He's my hero," says Roberto about Gian Piero. "He listens, quietly processes what I'm asking for, then brings it to life. Which doesn't happen in places like Siddi." Together, they're creating a new expression of Sardinian terreno, crossing genetic material, drying vegetables and legumes under a variety of conditions, and experimenting with harvesting times that give Roberto a whole new tool kit back in the kitchen.
We stand in the center of the garden, crunching on celery and lettuce leaves, biting into zucchini and popping peas from their shells- an improvised salad, a biodynamic breakfast that tastes of some future slowly forming in the tangle of roots and leaves around us.”
― Matt Goulding, Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture

“The house was squashed like a mushroom by a thatched roof that hung far out over the walls. A pair of windows sparkled on either side of a rounded, heavy wooden door. There was nothing particularly creepy or witch-ish about it at all, except for maybe some leeks that grew on the roof around the higgledy-piggledy chimney (out of which wafted a lovely, homey-smelling smoke).
Next to the cottage was a small fenced-in kitchen garden, and even in the low light Rapunzel could see it wasn't given over just to herbs and vegetables. Tall rockets of flowers and pretty, feathery foliage shot colorfully out of the corners.
There was even a neat flagstone path that led up to the front door.
"Witch?" Flynn asked, skeptical. "Or, like... crunchy earth mother type who drinks herbal teas and pretends the goddess speaks to her?”
― Liz Braswell, What Once Was Mine

“She dreamed that night of chickweed, which was a strange thing to dream about. Chickweed is a low, weedy little plant, not very distinguished. No one writes poetry comparing their lovers to chickweed (or if they do, the poems are rarely well received).”
― T. Kingfisher