Piet Oudolf

A garden is never ready. 

--"Piet Oudolf, Garden Designer." T: The New York Times Style Magazine, April 24, 2022, p. 74.

Delia Ephron and Peter Rutter

Rutter, silver haired but schoolboy youthful in a button-down shirt and a sweater, has the quiet intensity of all good therapists. He spoke of his beloved’s ordeal in Jungian terms.

A stem cell transplant is a profound identity shift, he said. “The miracle, and the trauma, in crossing over from death to life is of equal stature to a heart transplant. The simplest way to explain it is Delia was restored to herself, but she had to go through the gates of death to do it. It deepens anybody who has been close to that.”

Ephron shrugged. “You end up in the situation, and you just do what you do.”

Rutter said gently, “Actually Delia, that is the essence of being heroic. You persist even if it seems impossible.”

--Green, Penelope. "Delia Ephron Writes Her Way Through Cancer to a Happy Ending." New York Times. April 9, 2022.

Lauren Groff

A voice in her says that she will never again see the city that burns so darkly at her back. She is glad of the release of it. Aging is a constant loss; all the things considered essential in youth prove with time that they are not. Skins are shed, and left at the roadside for the new young to pick up and carry on.

--Gross, Lauren. Matrix (New York: Riverhead Books, 2021), p. 177

Diane Ott Whealy

Q: With all the plants and animals on your farm, I bet you make great compost.
A: We have the most diversified compost pile in the country, I think, because we have manure from chickens and White Park cattle. We have heirloom tomatoes, peppers, and squash in every color imaginable thrown onto the pile, and volunteer sunflowers and kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate blooming on the edges. It's really beautiful.

Q: You have a beautiful compost pile?
A: We do.

Q: Do people tell you that?
A: No. Nobody has.

interviewer: Steve Aitken, in Fine Gardening Magazine, Feb 2010
subject: Diane Ott Whealy, co-founder of Seed Savers Exchange