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Down the Garden Path QUOTES

Down the Garden Path QUOTES

1 " It was not till I experimented with seeds plucked straight from a growing plant that I had my first success...the first thrill of creation...the first taste of blood. This, surely, must be akin to the pride of paternity...indeed, many soured bachelors would wager that it must be almost as wonderful to see the first tiny crinkled leaves of one's first plant as to see the tiny crinkled face of one's first child. "

― Beverley Nichols , Down the Garden Path

2 " The seed of a blue lupin will usually produce a blue lupin. But the seed of a blue-eyed man may produce a brown-eyed bore...especially if his wife has a taste for gigolos. "

― Beverley Nichols , Down the Garden Path

3 " I think it is silly to be amateur about anything when one has an opportunity of learning. "

― Beverley Nichols , Down the Garden Path

4 " Whenever I arrive in my garden, I Make The Tour. Is this a personal idiosyncrasy, or do all good gardeners do it? It would be interesting to know. By Making The Tour, I mean only that I step from the front window, turn to the right, and make an infinitely detailed examination of every foot of ground, every shrub and tree, walking always over an appointed course.

There are certain very definite rules to be observed when you are Making The Tour. The chief rule is that you must never take anything out of its order. You may be longing to see if a crocus has come out in the orchard, but it is strictly forbidden to look before you have inspected all the various beds, bushes and trees that lead up to the orchard.

You must not look at the bed ahead before you have finished with the bed immediately in front of you. You may see, out of the corner of your eye, a gleam of strange and unsuspected scarlet in the next bed but one, but you must steel yourself against rushing to this exciting blaze, and you must stare with cool eyes at the earth in front, which is apparently blank, until you have made certain that it is not hiding anything. Otherwise you will find that you rush wildly round the garden, discover one or two sensational events, and then decide that nothing else has happened. Which means that you miss all the thrill of tiny shoots, the first lifting of the lids of wallflowers, the first precious gold of the witch-hazel, the early spear of the snowdrop. "

― Beverley Nichols , Down the Garden Path

5 " ...a cyclamen that looks like a flight of butterflies, frozen for a single, exquisite moment in the white heart of Time... "

― Beverley Nichols , Down the Garden Path

6 " Having obtained your design, and buried your rocks, your next task is to exercise phenomenal restraint about the things which you put in. I have always been a fervent advocate of birth-control, but since I have been the owner of a rock garden my fervour has increased a hundred-fold. The prolificacy of the common saxifrage is positively embarrassing. The speed with which the rock rose reproduces itself brings a blush to the cheek. Violas appear to have absolutely no self-control, and as for the alyssum . . . well, if we behaved like the alyssum, Australia would be over-populated before the year is out. "

― Beverley Nichols , Down the Garden Path

7 " If I see a scraggly lupin, I like to pass well out of its hearing before delivering any adverse comments on it. For how do we know what tortures it may be suffering? It surely can be no more pleasant for a lupin to have to appear with tarnished petals than for a woman to be forced to walk about with a spotty face. One does not say `Oh look at that awful girl covered with pimples!' Why then, should one stand over flowers and hurl insults at them? Besides, the flowers' condition may be all your own fault, which cannot be said of the girl's complexion, unless she is a particular friend of yours and you have been keeping her up too late at nights. "

― Beverley Nichols , Down the Garden Path

8 " The one thing of which we are certain, in an uncertain universe, is that energy is never lost. It is transformed, but it never disappears. "

― Beverley Nichols , Down the Garden Path