Guerrilla Gardening Quotes

By the end of summer, this trolley will be bursting with spuds. Like nature's own supermarket. ~ Lili Wilkinson

We need to use the benefit of our law enforcement people across this country, combined with our intelligence people across this country. We need to use our technological advantages, because what we've warned of is an international guerrilla movement that threatens this country. ~ Jim Gilmore

So we climb," Meg announced.
"Hello?" I said miserably. "Paralysed former god here."
Grover grimaced at Meg. "Duct tape?"
"Duct tape," she agreed.
May the gods defend me from heroes with duct tape. And heroes always seem to have duct tape. Meg produced a roll from a pouch on her gardening belt. She propped me into a sitting position, back-to-back with Grover, then proceeded to loop tape under our armpits, binding me to the satyr as if I were a hiking pack.
With Meg's help, Grover staggered to his feet, jostling me around so I got random views of the walls, the floor, Meg's face and my own paralysed legs manspreading beneath me. ~ Rick Riordan

I am intrigued by writers who garden and gardeners who write. The pen and the trowel are not interchangeable, but seem often linked. ~ Marta McDowell

The seventh type of guerrilla organization is that formed from bands of bandits and brigands. This, although difficult, must be carried out with utmost vigor lest the enemy use such bands to his own advantage. Many bandit groups pose as anti-Japanese guerrillas, and it is only necessary to correct their political beliefs to convert them. In ~ Mao Zedong

Trees and plants always look like the people they live with, somehow. ~ Zora Neale Hurston

For more than a decade, the United States had been giving large-scale military aid to the French colonialists, and then to the American-installed but authoritarian South Vietnamese government, to fight nationalists and communists in Vietnam. More than 23,000 U.S. military advisers were there by the end of 1964, occasionally engaging in combat. On the other side of the world, the American public knew and cared little about the guerrilla war. In fact, few knew exactly where Vietnam was. Nevertheless, people were willing to go along when their leaders told them that action was essential to resist communist aggression. ~ Edward S. Greenberg

Arriving at a mansion with another gate, low and nearly invisible inside its landscape gardening, seeming so much constructed of night itself that at sunrise it might all disappear. ~ Thomas Pynchon

This is the way life goes in Big Sur. Waiting for the mail, watching the sea-lions in the surf or the freighters on the horizon, sitting in the tubs at Hot Springs, once in a while a bit of drink - and, most of the time, working at what ever it is that you came here to work on, whether it be painting, writing, gardening or the simple art of living your own life. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

As soon as he stood in front of her, she folded her arms and looked cross.
"You don't have any gardening skills. You turned down a prestigious job to weed the garden?
"I will be rewarded richly in treasures untold."
She raised a brow.
"I've heard dragon-shifters pay a lot of money to merchants and the like.
"Aaagh, but you are also a dragon-shifter of a sort.
Yes, but I am a gardener, which means I don't go on high-risk missions to earn my gold. ~ Terry Spear

A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust. ~ Gertrude Jekyll

What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it. ~ Charles Dudley Warner

Writer's block is a myth. I never see the gardeners suffering from gardening block. ~ Emo Philips

Gardening has compensations out of all proportion to its goals. It is creation in the pure sense. ~ Phyllis McGinley

I park my bike in her driveway and ring her doorbell. I clear my throat so I don't choke on my words. Mierda, what am I gonna say to her? And why am I feeling all insecure, like I need to impress her because she'll judge me?
Nobody answers. I ring again.
Where's a servant or butler to answer the door when you need one? Just as I'm about to give up and slap myself with a big dose of what-the-fuck-do-I-think-I'm-doing, the door opens. Standing before me is an older version of Brittany. Obviously her mom. When she takes one look at me, her disappointing sneer is obvious.
"Can I help you?" she asks with an attitude. I sense either she expects me to be part of the gardening crew or someone going door-to-door harassing people. "We have a 'no soliciting policy' in this neighborhood."
"I'm, uh, not here to solicit anythin'. My name's Alex. I just wanted to know if Brittany was, uh, at home?" Oh, great. Now I'm mumbling uh's every two seconds. ~ Simone Elkeles

I've done a lot of guerrilla theater in my time. ~ Wole Soyinka

If your knees aren't green by the end of the day, you ought to seriously re-examine your life. ~ Bill Watterson

A garden is an awful responsibility. You never know what you may be aiding to grow in it. ~ Charles Dudley Warner

There is comfort in such accumulations, layers of lives, of years. Gardening tools, wheelbarrow, arousal cans, old bicycles, recycling bins, battered trash cans, cardboard boxes stacked in a corner, cracked clay pots, exiled kitchenware & furniture, antique television, dog food bowls. You could do an inventory of a household by all that has been worn out or excluded, exiled from it. You could do an inventory of a life. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

I like the physical activity of gardening. It's kind of thrilling. I do a lot of weeding. ~ John Hurt

There is a movement happening, a quiet one.
A low-profile, low-resolution revolution.
Comprised of writers and dreamers, of guerrilla artists and thought-ninjas.
Those with something to say.
They communicate through text inscribed on true public spaces, rather than blogs and forums.
Choosing fewer words, even without being bound by 140 character limits.
Using ink instead of pixels.
Sending messages in living, breathing space.
Pens scream louder into the void.
Even if permanent ink is not aptly named. ~ Erin Morgenstern

Beyond its practical aspects, gardening - be it of the soil or soul - can lead us on a philosophical and spiritual exploration that is nothing less than a journey into the depths of our own sacredness and the sacredness of all beings. After all, there must be something more mystical beyond the garden gate, something that satisfies the soul's attraction to beauty, peace, solace, and celebration. ~ Christopher McDowell

I have a strong antipathy to everything connected with gardens, gardening and gardeners ... Gardening seems to me a kind of admission of defeat ... Man was made for better things than pruning his rose trees. The state of mind of the confirmed gardener seems to me as reprehensible as that of the confirmed alcoholic. Both have capitulated to the world. Both have become lotus eaters and drifters. ~ Colin Wilson

Some of the gardeners, Nanao said, worked according to the precepts of Muso Soseki, others according to other Japanese Zen masters; others still to Fu Hsi, the legendary inventor of the Chinese system of geomancy called feng shui; others to Persian gardening gurus, including Omar Khayyam; or to Leopold or Jackson, or other early American ecologists, like the nearly forgotten biologist Oskar Schnelling; and so on. These ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Those of us who give body and soul to projects that never seem to end- child rearing, housecleaning, gardening- know the value of the occasional closed door. We need our moments of declared truce. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Use plants to bring life. ~ Douglas Wilson

When I would re-create myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most interminable and to the citizen, most dismal, swamp. I enter as a sacred place, a Sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength, the marrow, of Nature. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Guerrilla ontology The basic technique of all my books . Ontology is the study of being; the guerrilla approach is to so mix the elements of each book that the reader must decide on each page 'How much of this is real and how much is a put-on? ~ Robert Anton Wilson

I believe in gardening the soil as well as the soul. ~ Costa Georgiadis

A garden is to be enjoyed, and should satisfy the mind and not only the eye of the beholder. Sounds such as the rustle of bamboo and the dripping of water, scents and sensations such as grass or gravel or stone underfoot, appeal to the emotions and play a part in the total impression. ~ Penelope Hobhouse

A survey reported that the majority of the seminaries [in the United States] had no classes on prayer. That really shouldn't surprise us when we consider how many local churches offer classes on gardening and the "Art of Conversation" instead of the study of God's Word and prayer. ~ Billy Graham

They suggested E-meters, Gestalt, eating only high-mineral foods that had been planted during a full moon. ~ Emma Cline

There is no elegance or character of any sort in [the forsythia's] structure. Its crude expose of colour is undiluted by foliage. And in its most popular cultivars the flowers are packed into such congested lumps that it is like being asked to swallow a helping of cornflour pudding. ~ Christopher Lloyd

Gardeners are the ultimate mixologists. ~ Amy Stewart

If the art of gardening is at last to turn back from her extravagances and rest with her other sisters, it is, above everything, necessary to have clearly before you what you require ... It is certainly tasteless and inconsistent to desire to encompass the world with a garden-wall, but very practicable and reasonable to make a garden ... into a characteristic whole to the eye, heart, and nderstanding alike. ~ Friedrich Schiller

The strongest and most mysterious weeds often have things to teach us. ~ F.T. McKinstry

Our gardening forebears meant watermelon to be the juicy, barefoot taste of a hot summer's end, just as a pumpkin is the trademark fruit of late October. Most of us accept the latter, and limit our jack-o'-latern activities to the proper botanical season. Waiting for a watermelon is harder. It's tempting to reach for melons, red peppers, tomatoes, and other late-summer delights before the summer even arrives. But it's actually possible to wait, celebrating each season when it comes, not fretting about its being absent at all other times because something else good is at hand. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

She was a woman with a broom or a dust-
pan or a washrag or a mixing spoon in her hand. You saw
her cutting piecrust in the morning, humming to it, or you
saw her setting out the baked pies at noon or taking them in,
cool, at dusk. She rang porcelain cups like a Swiss bell ringer
to their place. She glided through the halls as steadily as a
vacuum machine, seeking, finding, and setting to rights. She
made mirrors of every window, to catch the sun. She strolled
but twice through any garden, trowel in hand, and the flowers
raised their quivering fires upon the warm air in her wake.
She slept quietly and turned no more than three times in a
night, as relaxed as a White glove to which, at dawn, a brisk
hand will return. Waking, she touched people like pictures,
to set their frames straight. ~ Ray Bradbury

I think that places, like people, ought to have boundaries. Who ever said that gardening was a public activity, anyway? Gardening, like making love, feels a lot better than it looks. Nobody buys tickets to gardening competitions. There's no such thing as the Gardening Olympics. There is no gold medal in Speed Weeding or Double Digging. Maybe there should be, but I wouldn't compete in a gardening Olympiad for all the compost in China. I go through ungainly contortions when I garden. I squat. I crawl around on my hands and knees. Most of the time I bend over, upended. That angle may be flattering to a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader, but it is not flattering to me. ~ Cassandra Danz

I plant daffodil bulbs about eight inches deep. As I mentioned before, I don't use a ruler. As a married woman, I know perfectly well what six or eight inches looks like, so it's easy to make a good estimate. This mental measurement makes planting time much more interesting than it might be otherwise. ~ Cassandra Danz

I always think of my sins when I weed. They grow apace in the same way and are harder still to get rid of. ~ Helena Rutherfurd Ely

Gardening is not a rational act. What matters is the immersion of the hands in the earth, that ancient ceremony of which the Pope kissingthe tarmac is merely a pallid vestigial remnant. ~ Margaret Atwood

To-day I think
Only with scents, - scents dead leaves yield,
And bracken, and wild carrot's seed,
And the square mustard field;
Odours that rise
When the spade wounds the root of tree,
Rose, currant, raspberry, or goutweed,
Rhubarb or celery;
The smoke's smell, too,
Flowing from where a bonfire burns
The dead, the waste, the dangerous,
And all to sweetness turns.
It is enough
To smell, to crumble the dark earth,
While the robin sings over again
Sad songs of Autumn mirth.
- A poem called DIGGING. ~ Edward Thomas

The Rough Beast snorted. "You don't get it at all, buddy. It's not about wrestling. It's about stories. We're storytellers."
Caperton studied him. "Somebody at my job just said that."
"It's true! You have to be able to tell the story to get people on board for anything. A soft drink, a suck sesh, elective surgery, gardening, even your thing
public space? I prefer private space, but that's cool. Anyway, nobody cares about anything if there isn't a story attached. Ask the team that wrote the Bible. Ask Vincent Allan Poe."
"But doesn't it seem kind of creepy?" Caperton said. "All of us just going around calling ourselves storytellers?"
The Rough Beast shrugged. "Well, you can be negative. That's the easy way out. ~ Sam Lipsyte

Garden as though you will live forever. ~ William Kent

What is a weed? I have heard it said that there are sixty definitions. For me, a weed is a plant out of place. ~ Donald C. Peattie

One lifetime is never enough to accomplish one's horticultural goals. If a garden is a site for the imagination, how can we be very far from the beginning? ~ Francis Cabot Lowell

Someone once said writing and gardening are similar pursuits. Tell you what, I'd have one fucked up garden if that were the case. ~ Carla H. Krueger

Learning how to operate a soul figures to take time. ~ Timothy Leary