Winter


Quotes and Poems for Those that Love
Gardens, Gardening and the Green Way

Compiled by Michael P. Garofalo

January

February

March

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure in the
landscape - the loneliness of it - the dead feeling of winter. 
Something waits beneath it - the whole story doesn't show.
-  Andrew Wyeth

January is the quietest month in the garden.  ...  But just because it looks
quiet doesn't mean that nothing is happening.  The soil, open to the sky,
absorbs the pure rainfall while microorganisms convert tilled-under
fodder into usable nutrients for the next crop of plants.  The feasting
earthworms tunnel along, aerating the soil and preparing it to
welcome the seeds and bare roots to come.
-  Rosalie Muller Wright, Editor of Sunset Magazine, 1/99

In the depths of winter I finally learned that within me
there lay an invincible summer.
-  Albert Camus

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant.
-  Anne Bradstreet

Spring - Quotes for Gardeners

There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you ..... In spring, summer and fall people sort of have an open season on each other; only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself.
-  Ruth Stout

 

 

 

 

 

 

The cold was our pride, the snow was our beauty.   It fell and fell, 
lacing day and night together in a milky haze, making everything 
quieter as it fell, so that winter seemed to partake of religion in a 
way no other season did, hushed, solemn.
-   Patricia Hampl

 

 

 

 

 

 

Death - Quotes for Gardeners

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the sheltered heart of the clumps last year's foliage still clings to the
lower branches,  tatters of orange that mutter with the passage of the wind,
the talk of old women warning the green generation of what they, too,
must come to when the sap runs back.
-   Jacquetta Hawkes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth.
-   John Davies, 1570-1626,  Ode to the West Wind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches.
-   E. E. Cummings

 

 

 

 

 

 

One kind word can warm three winter months.
-   Japanese proverb

 

 

 

 

 

 

Winter, a lingering season, is a time to gather golden moments, 
embark upon a sentimental journey, and enjoy every idle hour. 
-   John Boswell

 

 

 

 

 

 

I've been a dweller on the plains,
have sighed when summer days were gone;
No more I'll sigh; for winter here
Hath gladsome gardens of his own.
-  Dorothy Wordsworth, Peaceful Our Valley, Fair and Green

 

 

 

 

 

 

Look at us, said the violets blooming at her feet, all last winter we slept
in the seeming death but at the right time God awakened us,
and here we are to comfort you.
-  Edward Payson Rod

The stag bells, winter snows, summer has gone
Wind high and cold, the sun low, short its course
The sea running high.
Deep red the bracken; its shape is lost;
The wild goose has raised its accustomed cry,
Cold has seized the birds' wings;
Season of ice, this is my news.
-   Irish poem, 9th Century

The flowers of late winter and early spring occupy places
in our hearts well out of proportion to their size.
-   Gertrude S. Wister

Nature chose for a tool, not the earthquake or lightning to rend and split
asunder, not the stormy torrent or eroding rain, but the tender snow-flowers
noiselessly falling through unnumbered centuries.
-   John Muir

Lo!  now the direful monster, whose skin clings
To his strong bones, strides o'er the groaning rocks:
He withers all in silence, and his hand
Unclothes the earth, and freezes up frail life.
-   William Blake, Poetical Sketches -Winter, 1783

Winter is the time for comfort - it is the time for home. 
-   Edith Sitwell

Antisthenes says that in a certain faraway land the cold
is so intense that words freeze as soon as they are uttered,
and after some time then thaw and become audible, so
that words spoken in winter go unheard
until the next summer.
-   Plutarch, Moralia

Keep your faith in beautiful things;
in the sun when it is hidden,
in the Spring when it is gone.
-   Roy R. Gibson

Over the land freckled with snow half-thawed
The speculating rooks at their nests cawed
And saw from elm tops, delicate as flower of grass,
What we below could not see, Winter pass.
-   Edward Thomas

From December to March, there are for many of us three gardens -
the garden outdoors,
the garden of pots and bowls in the house,
and the garden of the mind's eye.
-  Katherine S. White

March - Quotes for Gardeners

The grim frost is at hand, when apples will fall thick,
almost thunderous, on the hardened earth.
-   D. H. Lawrence

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How can those who do not garden, who have no lot in the great
fraternity of those who watch the changing year as it affects the
earth and its growth, how can they keep warm their hearts in winter?
-   Francis King

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Winter is icumen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm,
Raineth drop and staineth slop,
And how the wind doth ramm !
Sing : Goddam.
-   Ezra Pound, Ancient Music

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Plow, naked man!  Sow, naked man!  Winter is farmer's lazy time.
In cold weather the farmers enjoy their gain for the most part
and they happily prepare feasts for each other.
Friendly winter is inviting and lightens their cares,
as when loaded boats at last reach port
and the happy sailors place crowns upon the sterns.
Still, then is the time to pick the oaken acorns,
the laurel's berries, the olive and the blood-red myrtle;
the time to set traps for cranes and nets for stags;
the time to chase the long-eared rabbits, to smite the does
as you whirl the thongs of a Balearic sling,
when the snow lies deep and the rivers push ice.

-   Publius Vergilius Maro, Georgics - Book I, 299-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every gardener knows that under the cloak of winter lies a miracle ...
a seed waiting to sprout, a bulb opening to the light, a bud straining to unfurl.  
And the anticipation nurtures our dream.
-   Barbara Winkler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

February is merely as long as is needed to pass the time until March.
-   Dr. J. R. Stockton

 

 

 

 

 

 

The leafless poplars sway
A warm and windy Winter's day -
grackles chattering

-  Mike Garofalo, Cuttings

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If there were no tribulation, there would be no rest;
if there were no winter, there would be no summer.
-   St. John Chrysostom

 

 

 

 

 

 

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves
-   Wallace Stevens, The Snow Man, 1923

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Christmas I no more desire a rose
Than wish a snow in May's newfangled mirth;
But like each thing that in season grows.
-   William Shakespeare

Outliving
them all, all -
how cold.
- Issa

Closer, closer
to paradise -
how cold.
- Issa

In a way Winter is the real Spring - the time when the inner things happen,
the resurgence of nature.
-   Edna O'Brien

Life is a series of little deaths out of which life always returns.
-   Charles Feidelson, Jr.

December - Poems, Quotes, Ideas, Sayings, Folklore

One leaf left on a branch
and not a sound of sadness
or despair. One leaf left
on a branch and no unhappiness.
One leaf left all by itself
in the air and it does not speak
of loneliness or death.
One leaf and it spends itself
in swaying mildly in the breeze.
-  David Ignatow

cold midnight
   pounding rain -
        only ghosts about
                         -   Mike Garofalo, Cuttings

Sweet bird!  thy bow'r is ever green,
Thy sky is ever clear;
thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
No winter in thy year.
-  John Logan,  1748 - 1788

I believe that the beloved St. Nicholas, old St. Nick - Santa Claus,
was the first saint recognized for the true miracles of
generosity and compassion, rather than for martyrdom. 

Green thoughts emerge from some deep source of stillness
which the very fact of winter has released.
-   Mirabel Osler

Winter has caused damage everywhere:
meadow and forest are all grey,
where before you heard many sounds.
If I could see the girls play ball on the street,
then bird song would come back.
If only I could sleep through the winter!
When I am awake I feel only hatred
that his power is so far and wide.
God knows, he even fights with May;
I picked flowers where there is now snow.

-    Walter von der Vogelweide
Translated by Albrecht Classen

'Tis not the season of
the leaf whose
fragile body’s broken veins
disintegrate in
gusts of winds while
winter blows a frosty coat that
caps the barren land.
-   Lucille Younger

I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow
to keep an appointment with a beech-tree,
or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.
-   Henry David Thoreau,  1817 - 1862

Quotes for Gardeners

Quotes, Sayings, Proverbs, Poetry, Maxims, Quips, Clichés, Adages, Wisdom
A Collection Growing to Over 2,700 Quotes,  Arranged by 130 Topics
Many of the Documents Include Recommended Readings and Internet Links.
Over 6 MB of Text.
Compiled by Michael P. Garofalo

Winter is the time of promise because there is so little to do - or because you can now and then permit yourself  the luxury of thinking so.
-   Stanley Crawford

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                               This is what I have heard
                                               at last the wind in December
                                               lashing the old trees with rain
                                               unseen rain racing along the tiles
                                               under the moon
                                               wind rising and falling
                                               wind with many clouds
                                               trees in the night wind
                                                                      -   W. S. Merwin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We go, in winter's biting wind,
On many a short-lived winter day,
With aching back but willing mind
To dig and double dig the clay.
-   Ruth Pitter, 1897-1992, The Diehards, 1941

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some lives, like evening primroses, blossom most
beautifully in the evening of life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Through winter-time we call on spring,
And through the spring on summer call,
And when the abounding hedges ring
Declare that winter's best of all:
And after that there's nothing good
Because the spring time has not come--
Not know that what disturbs our blood
Is but its longing for the tomb.
-   W. B. Yeats

Memory is the power to gather roses in winter.

The trees down the boulevard stand naked in thought,
Their abundant summery wordage silenced, caught
In the grim undertow; naked the trees confront
Implacable winter's long, cross-questioning brunt.

-  D. H. Lawrence, Winter in the Boulevard, 1916

Someone painted pictures on my
     Windowpane last night --
Willow trees with trailing boughs
     And flowers, frosty white,

And lovely crystal butterflies;
     But when the morning sun
Touched them with its golden beams,
     They vanished one by one.

-   Helen Bayley Davis, Jack Frost

As I write, snow is falling outside my Maine window, 
and indoors all around me
half a hundred garden catalogues are in bloom.
-  Katharine S. White

January - Quotes, Poems, Folklore, Links, Chores

For the ignorant, old age is as winter; for the learned, it is a harvest.
-  Jewish Proverb

Dead of winter.
Cold hands warm heart.
As pure as snow.
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.
Now is the winter of our discontent.
Left out in the cold.
-  Clichés for Gardeners

So with the stretch of the white road before me,
Shining snow crystals rainbowed by the sun,
Fields that are white, stained with long, cool, blue shadows,
Strong with the strength of my horse as we run.
Joy in the touch of the wind and the sunlight!
Joy!  With the vigorous earth I am one.
-   Amy Lowell, A Winter Ride

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,  1564 - 1616

Still in bloom--
California flowers dance
to winter song
-   Victor P. Gendrano

And for the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of that country 
know them to be sharp and violent, and subject to cruel and fierce storms . . . 
For summer being done, all things stand upon them with a weather-beaten face, 
and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hue.
-   William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1650

Turn down the noise.  Reduce the speed.  Be like the
somnolent bears, or those other animals that slow
down and almost die in the cold season.  Let it be
the way it is.  The magic is there in its power.
-   Henry Mitchell

I have often thought, it happens very well that 
Christmas should fall out in the Middle of Winter.

-  Joseph Addison, 1672 - 1719

   The north wind doth blow,
And we shall have snow,
                      And what will the dormouse do then,
          Poor thing?
                       Roll'd up like a ball,
     In his nest snug and small,
                         He'll sleep till warm weather comes in,
          Poor thing.

                             -   Traditional ballad, The North Wind Doth Blow

Shed no tear - O, shed no tear!
The flower will bloom another year.
Weep no more - O, weep no more!
Young buds sleep in the root's white core.
- John Keats

                          There is neither heaven nor earth
                          Only snow,
                          Falling incessantly
                                                  -    Hashin

February - Quotes, Poems, Folklore, Chores

All Nature seems at work.   Slugs leave their lair-
The bees are stirring - birds are on the wing -
And Winter slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
And I the while, the sole unbusy thing,
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.
-  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772 - 1834, Work Without Hope

Out in a world of death far to the northward lying, 
Under the sun and the moon, under the dusk and the day; 
Under the glimmer of starts and the purple of sunsets dying, 
Wan and waste and white, stretch the great lakes away. 

Never a bud of spring, never a laugh of summer, 
Never a dream of love, never a song of bird; 
But only the silence and white, the shores that grow chiller and dumber, 
Wher'ever the ice winds sob, and the griefs of winter are heard. 

Crags that are black and wet out of the grey lake looming, 
Under the sunset's flush and the pallid, faint glimmer of dawn; 
Shadowy, ghost-like shores, where midnight surfs are booming 
Thunders of wintry woe over the spaces wan.

Wifred Campbell, The Winter Lakes

Seasons - Quotes for Gardeners

One of my current pet theories is that the winter is a kind of evangelist,
more subtle than Billy Graham, of course, but of the same stuff.
-  Shirley Ann Grau, 1929-

Ceremonies in honor of the Roman Goddess Februa took place around February 2nd.
Stalks of dried mullen were dipped in fats and then burned in honor of the goddess.
Centuries later, Candlemas Day was celebrated, again with burning mullen stalks,
in honor of the Virgin Mary of Christendom.  The celebrations emphasized
purification and cleanliness.

The world's great age begins anew,
The golden years return,
The earth doth like a snake renew
Her winter weeds outworn.
-   John Davies. 1570-1626

There are two seasonal diversions that can ease the bite of any winter.
One is the January thaw.  The other is the seed catalogues.
-   Hal Borland

It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
-   Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, 1923

         My little horse must think it queer
          To stop without a farmhouse near
              Between the woods and frozen lake
        The darkest evening of the year.

            He gives his harness bells a shake
      To ask if there is some mistake.
           The only other sound's the sweep
    Of easy wind and downy flake.

                 The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
   And miles to go before I sleep,
  And miles to go before I sleep.

                                       -  Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Feathered with hoarfrost,
skeletal trees loom closer;
fog shrouded arches.
-  Paul Brown

Spring and Summer, Spent
For Others, While Fall Days Lead
To My Wintertime.
-  Author Unknown

Winter is the season dominated by bare soil: the whole gardening cycle
begins with the care and preparation of the earth during winter so that
it will feed plants the following year.  One of the things I enjoy about
digging (and there are lots of things I enjoy about it) is the smell of the
earth that is released by the spade cutting in and lifting clods that have
been buried for a year.  Not only does the soil itself have a real scent,
but the roots of the crop or plant - even weed - that has been growing
there will also contribute to the mix, creating something new out of the
vague remnants of last season's garden.
-   Monty Don, The Sensuous Garden, 1997

The summer chair
rocking by itself
In the blizzard
- Jack Kerouac

Even in warmest
glow, how
cold my shadow.
-   Issa, And Still Birds Sing, p. 240

Cold Mountain Buddhas (Han Shan Te'Ch'-ing)

To see a hillside white with dogwood bloom is to know a particular
ecstasy of beauty, but to walk the gray Winter woods and find the
buds which will resurrect that beauty in another May
is to partake of continuity.
-   Hal Borland

Sharp is the night, but stars with frost alive
Leap off the rim of earth across the dome.
It is a night to make the heavens our home
More than the nest whereto apace we strive.
Lengths down our road each fir-tree seems a hive,
In swarms outrushing from the golden comb.
They waken waves of thoughts that burst to foam:
The living throb in me, the dead revive.
Yon mantle clothes us: there, past mortal breath,
Life glistens on the river of the death.
It folds us, flesh and dust; and have we knelt,
Or never knelt, or eyed as kine the springs
Of radiance, the radiance enrings:
And this is the soul's haven to have felt.

-   George Meredith, Winter Heavens

In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter,
Long ago.
-  Christina Rossetti, A Christmas Carol

More Quotes

for

Gardeners

Trees

Spirituality and Concerns of the Soul

Flowers

Weeds and Weeding

Simplicity and the Simple Life

Pulling Onions:  Quips and Observations of a Gardener
By Michael P. Garofalo

The Essence of Gardening

Working in the Garden

Garden Digest Links  

Green Way Weblog

Haiku Poetry  -  Links and Bibliography

Clichés for Gardeners and Farmers

Jokes, Riddles and Humor

The History of Gardening Timeline
From Ancient Times to the 20th Century

Short Poems by Michael P. Garofalo

Seeing and Vision

Beauty in the Garden

Seasons and Time

Awards and Recognition for this Web Site

Religion

The Mental and Spiritual Aspects of Gardening:
Bibliography and Resources

The Spirit of Gardening

Quotes for Gardeners

Quotes, Sayings, Proverbs, Poetry, Maxims, Quips, Clichés, Adages, Wisdom
A Collection Growing to Over 2,700 Quotes, Arranged by 130 Topics
Many of the Documents Include Recommended Readings and Internet Links.
Compiled by Michael P. Garofalo

Distributed on the Internet by Michael P. Garofalo

I Welcome Your Comments, Ideas, Contributions, and Suggestions
E-mail Mike Garofalo in Red Bluff, California

A Short Biography of Mike Garofalo

Winter  -  Quotes, Poems, Folklore, Customs, Garden Chores.
26 March 2003

This document was first distributed on the Internet in January 2001.
This document will be expanded and improved in 2003.

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The Spirit of Gardening

Quotes for Gardeners

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Seasons