" This effort has turned Lawrence the engineer into Lawrence the philosopher. "There was a time, when I was a child, when the whole world seemed alive and knowing," he wrote in Organic Gar­dening and Farming. "Trees were friends and as George Eliot put it: ,'Flowers see us and know what we're thinking about. ' Then came a time when plants just grew, silently and without emotion. But today, I'm entering a second childhood, as least as far as plants are concerned. "

― Peter Tompkins , The Secret Life of Plants: A Fascinating Account of the Physical, Emotional and Spiritual Relations Between Plants and Man