Articles and Features

Spring and Gardening

Week of April 26, 1998

Every year it happens. People say that the weather is unpredictable, but every year the same thing happens. The weather in Salt Lake fooled everyone but me. Each Spring, the weather turns warm and beautiful. The tulips and daffodils are fooled into coming from their underground dens. The ducks mate without shame on the lawns. The humans plant tender flowers and vegetables. Then, like clockwork, the Winter is back with a vengeance, crushing the tulip and daffodils, chilling the duck eggs and killing the flowers and vegetables.

I escaped it this year. I was busy with my new life and working my butt off somewhere else, so my flowers didn't get planted and my herbs sat in the kitchen window. My darling plants were spared the vengeance of the jealous winter this year. Spring is back for real now, and yesterday I planted my lovely flowers.

Here are some quotations about Spring.

Introduction and quote compilation by Laura S. Moncur, Staff Writer.

"Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart."
Victor Hugo
"If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall."
Nadine Stair
"At Christmas I no more desire a rose Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled mirth; But like of each thing that in season grows."
William Shakespeare, Love's Labour Lost
"The great French Marshall Lyautey once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow growing and would not reach maturity for 100 years. The Marshall replied, 'In that case, there is no time to lose; plant it this afternoon!'"
John F. Kennedy
"Flowers never emit so sweet and strong a fragrance as before a storm. When a storm approaches thee, be as fragrant as a sweet-smelling flower."
Jean Paul Richter
"Every year, back come Spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with plants."
Dorothy Parker
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