“Often I hear people say, ‘How do you make your plants flourish like this?’ as they admire the little flower patch I cultivate in the summer. ‘I can never make my plants blossom like this! What is your secret?’ And I answer with one word, Love.”
So wrote Celia Thaxter (1835-1895). She went on to say:
“Love includes the patience that endures continual trial, the constancy that makes perseverance possible, the power of foregoing ease of mind and body to minister to the necessities of the thing beloved, and the subtle bond of sympathy which is as important, if not more so, than all the rest. For although I cannot go as far as a witty friend of mine, who says his wisteria vine leans toward him and lays her head on his shoulder, I am fully and intensely aware that plants are conscious of love and respond to it, as they do to nothing else. You may give them all they need of food and drink and make the conditions of their existence as favorable as possible, and they may grow and bloom, but there is a certain ineffable something that will be missing if you do not love them, a delicate glory that is too spiritual to be caught and put into words.”
Celia Thaxter wrote these words in An Island Garden in 1895.
This is Moya Andrews, and today we focused on Celia Thaxter’s words.
