{"quotes":[{"text":"At Bramasole, the first secret spot that draws me outside is a stump and board bench on a high terrace overlooking the lake and valley. Before I sit down, I must bang the board against a tree to knock off all the ants. Then I'm happy. With a stunted oak tree for shelter and a never-ending view, I am hidden. No one knows where I am. The nine-year-old's thrill of the hideout under the hydrangea comes back: My mother is calling me and I am not answering.","author":"Frances Mayes","tags":["garden","home","italy","sense-of-place"],"id":3001,"author_id":"Frances+Mayes"},{"text":"Exclusiveness in a garden is a mistake as great as it is in society.","author":"Alfred Austin","tags":["great","mistake","garden "],"id":6363,"author_id":"Alfred+Austin"},{"text":"A man of words and not of deeds, Is like a garden full of weeds.","author":"Benjamin Franklin","tags":["deeds","garden","weeds","words"],"id":8982,"author_id":"Benjamin+Franklin"},{"text":"I wouldn't coax the plant if I were you.Such watchful nursing may do it harm.Let the soil rest from so much diggingAnd wait until it's dry before you water it.The leaf's inclined to find its own direction;Give it a chance to seek the sunlight for itself.Much growth is stunted by too careful prodding,Too eager tenderness.The things we love we have to learn to leave alone.","author":"Naomi Long Madgett","tags":["alone","flower","garden","life","love","plant","poetry","sunlight"],"id":9114,"author_id":"Naomi+Long+Madgett"},{"text":"There is something subversive about this garden of Serena's, a sense of buried things bursting upwards, wordlessly, into the light, as if to point, to say: Whatever is silenced will clamor to be heard, though silently.","author":"Margaret Atwood","tags":["garden","secrets","silence"],"id":9654,"author_id":"Margaret+Atwood"},{"text":"To anyone with a drop of Irish blood in them the land they live on is like their mother. It's the only thing that lasts, that's worth working for, for fighting for...","author":"Alexandra Ripley","tags":["earth","garden","irish","land","nature"],"id":10280,"author_id":"Alexandra+Ripley"},{"text":"After Nicholas hung up the phone, he watched his mother carry buckets and garden tools across the couch grass toward a bed that would, come spring, be brightly ablaze as tropical coral with colorful arctotis, impatiens, and petunias. Katherine dug with hard chopping strokes, pulling out wandering jew and oxalis, tossing the uprooted weeds into a black pot beside her.The garden will be beautiful, he thought. But how do the weeds feel about it? Sacrifices must be made.","author":"Stephen M. Irwin","tags":["choices","flowers","garden","gardening","mother","sacrifices","son","unfairness-of-life","weeding","weeds"],"id":12039,"author_id":"Stephen+M.+Irwin"},{"text":"He asked her, 'Why do you feel sorry for me, Old Woman?'The Old Woman stood beside him and looked out the window at the Garden, so beautiful, flowering and everywhere illuminated by the rays of the setting sun, and said, 'I feel sorry for you, dear Youth, because I know where you are gazing and what you are waiting for. I feel sorry for you and your mother.'Perhaps because of these words, or perhaps because of something else, there was a change in the Youth's mood. The Garden, flowering behind the high fence below his window, and exuding a wonderful fragrance, suddenly seemed somehow strange to him; and an ominous sensation, a sudden fear, gripped his heart with a violent palpitation, like heady and languid fragrances rising from brilliant flowers.'What is happening?' he wondered in confusion.('The Poison Garden').","author":"Valery Bryusov","tags":["decadence","garden","innocence","poison","youth"],"id":13486,"author_id":"Valery+Bryusov"},{"text":"The garden has wrapped itself in autumn haze. An unusual autumn, lacking that thrill of vegetal warmth when the sap is still alive and holds up the trees, drunk on solar gold. It is the sorrowful climax of a summer's drought. Never before was I so struck by the cancerous emaciation in a garden. The leaves started turning yellow in July and began falling, like a dance of prematurely withered bodies.","author":"Emil Dorian","tags":["flowers","garden","nature"],"id":14807,"author_id":"Emil+Dorian"},{"text":"A Tennyson garden, heavy with scent, languid; the return of the word swoon.","author":"Margaret Atwood","tags":["flowers","garden","sensuality"],"id":15571,"author_id":"Margaret+Atwood"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":273,"pages":28,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}