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POINTS OF VIEW (4)          POINTS OF VIEW (1)      POINTS OF VIEW (2)      POINTS OF VIEW (3)

Compiled by Wayne Handlos  PhD

 

The following quotations are from Rex Stout, The League of Frightened Men, 1935

(Bantam Edition, 1982)

 

Wolfe had once remarked to me that the orchids were his concubines: insipid, expensive,

parasitic and temperamental. P. 5

Wolfe was in one of his sighing moods. He sighed as he said good morning and he

sighed as he got into his chair. It might have meant anything from one measly little

orchid getting bug on it up to a major relapse. P. 114

Ditson had phoned to say that he had a dozen bulbs of a new Miltonia just arrived

from England, and had offered to give Wolfe a couple if he would send for them.

The only times I ever really felt like turning Communist were the occasions when, in

the middle of a case, Wolfe sent me chasing around after orchids. It made me feel

too damn silly. P. 132

Wolfe was in the tropical room, going down the line looking for aphids, and from

the expression on his face I knew he had found some. I stood there, and pretty soon

he turned and looked at me as if I was either an aphid myself or had them all over

me. There was no use attempting any conversation. P. 194

… Mr Chapin … wilted like a Dendrobium with root-rot … p. 215

The following quotations are from Gardening for Love – The Market Bulletins,

Elizabeth Lawrence, Duke University Press, Durham, 1987. [Lent by Debby Lipp]

Botanical nomenclature is a restless affair, old names being altered as older ones are

found or as the understanding of the relations among different species and genera

of plants change. P. 9

“This is the gate of my garden. I invite you to enter it; not only into my garden,

but into the world of gardens-a world as old as the history of man, and as new as

the latest contributions of science; a world of mystery, adventure, and romance; a

world of poetry and philosophy; a world of beauty; and a world of work. Never let

yourself be deceived about the work. There is no royal road to learning (as my

grandmother used to say). And there is no royal road to gardening- although men

seem to think that there is.” Pp. 17-18

“Any garden demands as much of its maker as he has to give. But I do not need to

tell you, if you are a gardener, that no other undertaking will give as great a return

for the amount of effort put into it.” P. 18

I cannot conceive of a more delightful scheme, or of one less likely to succeed [a

rock garden in a box in a tenement in England]. When I find the practical Miss

Jekyll recommending small saxifrages, the most difficult of rock plants, for growing

in the sooty air of a great manufacturing town in the north of England, it convinces

me that even the gods can nod. P. 47-48

In Eudora Welty’s Losing Battles, the house plants among Granny’s birthday presents

all came out of the market bulletin. She complained about getting the same

old Christmas cactus she was so sick of. She also got a speckled geranium, an improved

Boston fern packed in a bread wrapper, a prayer plant, a double touch-menot,

and a tub of recently dug hyacinth bulbs. P. 51

…Colette’s account of La Varenne, the village herb woman, in “For A Flower Album.”

La Varrenne never got the plant wrong, but she seldom got its name right.

She said “amourous” for “amurosis” (“and thus the ancient narcotic was turned

into an aphrodisiac”), and like the rest of the village she called geraniums

“geramions.” P 146-147

The bark of the cucumber tree (Magnolia acuminate) is used in a tonic. Mrs.

Lounsberrry says an infusion of the fruit in whisky or apple brandy is supposed to

prevent intermittent fevers-or perhaps it just makes a good excuse for a drink? P.

148

The following are from The Secret Teachings of Plants – The Intelligence of the

Heart in the Direct Perception of Nature by Stephen Harrod Buhner, Bear & Co.,

Rochester, Vermont, 2004 (The quotations are good but forget the book.)

Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that

makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic. Frank Herbert,

p. 16

Most men only care for science so far as they get a living by it, and that they worship

even error when it affords them a subsistence. Goethe, p. 16

We shall see but little way if we are required to understand what we see. How few things

can a man measure with the tape of his understanding! How many greater things might he

 be seeing in the meanwhile? Henry David Thoreau, p. 16

I have never known a clergyman or a professor who could be more narrow, bigoted, and

intolerant than some scientists, or pseudoscientists…Intolerance is a closed mind. Bigotry

is an exaltation of authorities. Narrowness is ignorance unwilling to be taught. … Ossified

knowledge is a dead-weight to the world, and it does not matter in what realm of man’s

 intellectual activities it is found…Any obstinate clinging to outworn doctrines, whether of religion

 or politics or morality or of science, are equally damning and equally damnable. Luther Burbank, p. 21

“Nature is,” as Henry David Thoreau understood so well, “a prairie for outlaws.” Those who go into

Nature become, of necessity, uncivilized. Thoreau was well read. He knew that the world “civilized”

comes from the Latin civilis, meaning “under law, orderly.” Ah, his little joke. Civilis itself comes from

an older Latin word, civis, meaning “someone who lives in a city, a citizen.” Those who go into wilderness,

into Nature that has not been tamed, are no longer under (arbitrary) human law, but under the all-encompassing,

inevitable law of Nature. Buhner, p. 134

I am afraid of cities. But you mustn’t leave them. If you go too far you come up against the vegetation belt.

Vegetation has crawled for miles towards the cities. It is waiting. Once the city is dead, the vegetation will

cover it, will climb over the stones, grip them, search them, make them burst with its long black pincers; it

will blind the holes and let its green paws hang over everything. Jean-Paul Sartre, p. 134

Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo.

 Basho, p. 141

Plants are like people; some you will not like, some you will be ambivalent about, some are boring, some

are nice acquaintancesthat you will get to know slowly over the years, but some … some you fall in love with

 immediately and deeply and want to know intimately. You will want to know their life stories, know them as

completely as you have ever known anyone. Buhner, p.161

With plants, as with people, intimacy begins with a chance meeting. You may hear about a plant and its healing

 uses from another herbalist and find that you cannot stop thinking of it, see a picture of it in a book and find your

attention captured, or encounter it by chance on a walk in the wild and notice that it seems special to you in some

 way. These chance encounters are the beginning of intimacy. The intimacy deepens when you take time to foster

it, when you focus on the plant and take the time to really come to know it. Buhner, p. 165

Personal relationships with plants are like personal relationships with people. A whole range of experience exists,

for there are many types of plants, each with its own personality, each of which will draw your interest and affection

to differing degrees. Buhner, p. 166

There is nothing magical or mysterious about my methods, and what I have learned to do others can learn to do,

and what I have started others can finish, and what I have learned about the laws of Nature can be applied by others

and added to by others, if only they will waken to the possibilities that exist. Luther Burbank, p. 220

The senses do not deceive, judgement deceives. Goethe, p 233

I farm the dust of my ancestors, though the chemist’s analysis may not detect it. I go forth to redeem the meadows

they have become. Henry David Thoreau, p. 261

What I have had, you may have, what I have enjoyed you may enjoy, what I have learned you may learn, it is all free,

all open, all generously bestowed in man. Luther Burbank, p. 271

We give a good deal of attention to the wonder of the growth of the mind of a child, but it seems to me that the

wonder does not cease with childhood. Luther Burbank, p. 282

I suspect that the child plucks its first flower with an insight into its beauty and significance which the subsequent

botanist never retains. Henry David Thoreau, p.289

If you will look over the wise and the great and the useful you will find them down close to the ground.

Luther Burbank, p. 295

                                                                                                                                 

© 2010, Central Coast Geranium Society (CCGS )