I’m going to add a posting feature to this blog and call it “Saturday Snippets.” As I began with the idea of rediscovering gardening and my many garden-related books, and named the blog after one of my favorites, “Old Herbaceous” by Reginald Arkell, I thought it would be fun to share weekly snippets of garden literature from my collection.

Here’s my first snippet:

“Gardening was a whole-time job, like the cows or the sheep. Cows had to be milked, whatever happened; and who thought of stopping in bed when the sheep were lambing? In a garden, you had to work with the seasons. There were slack times, when you could take an easy with a pipe behind the tool shed, but when the grass started growing and the weeds were getting on top of you, there was an end to all that nonsense….Hours he’d spent watering….But these young fellows….”

Old Herbaceous, Reginald Arkell.