Gardening is not a rational act.
Interpretation
Gardening reflects an emotional or instinctual connection to nature rather than a purely logical endeavor.
Margaret Atwood suggests that gardening goes beyond logic and reason; it is an act driven by deep-seated instincts and emotions. Engaging with nature in this way allows individuals to connect with the earth and their own inner selves, highlighting the irrational but fulfilling aspects of cultivating life.
In practice
Using this quote in a speech about the therapeutic benefits of gardening.
If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go; but it’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength.
I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.
What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. Nobody in any other game would be crazy enough to hire me. I wouldn't even make a good ditch-digger, I'd start tearing apart the sewer-system, trying to pick-axe and unearth all those chthonic symbols - pipes, valves, cloacal conduits... No, no. I'll have to be a slave in the paper-mines for all time.
We love each other, that’s true whatever it means, but we aren’t good at it; for some it’s a talent, for others only an addiction.
I've learned quite a lot, over the years, by avoiding what I was supposed to be learning.
Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.
What more delightful avocation than to take a piece of land and by cautious experimentation to prove how it works. What more substantial service to conservation than to practice it on one's own land?
The summer breeze was blowing on your face_x000D_ _x000D_ Within your violet you treasure your summery words_x000D_ _x000D_ And as the shiver from my neck down to my spine_x000D_ _x000D_ Ignited me in daylight and nature in the garden
Nothing in nature is exhausted in its first use...In God, every end is converted into a new means.
In the realm of Nature there is nothing purposeless, trivial, or unnecessary
Water is the best of all things.
One thing I did was grow up as an ardent naturalist. I never grew out of my bug period.
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