Morris Green Idyll



"My work is the embodiment of dreams in one form or another."

~ William Morris


"Step into the potting shed and the hum of the everyday world dwindles into silence. The air is warm and smells of earth. Wood flats checkerboard the potting bench, terra-cotta pots tower in the corner like soup bowls on a kitchen shelf, and bins of soil beckon, their contents rich and deep. ... Sequestered from the accustomed demands of life, and focused on the task before us, our imaginations swell. The garden beyond the door grows lush in an instant, and plum trees planted only yesterday droop beneath the weight of sun-warmed fruit. Visions for next season, and for countless years to come, unfold in vivid color to dazzle and entice. A new perennial bed against that old brick wall. A trellis of climbing roses beside the bedroom window. A fence of espaliered apple trees along the garden walk."*




"Spring comes early behind the closed doors of the potting shed. Gardeners cannot wait for it to arrive in its own good time, creeping slowly through the perennial beds; winter has been too long and the hunger for green is too great. Weeks before the soil outside has lost its icy chill or heart-shaped leaves have clothed the naked lilacs, we urge the season along."*




“Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like?"...
"It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine...”

~ Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden





"Beauty … is, I contend, no mere accident to human life, which people can take or leave as they choose, but a positive necessity of life."

~ William Morris


xo







For Eva Ricci's March in Green hosted by Karrie Brewer Drake, this month.

* The Potting Shed by Linda Joan Smith p. 9, 10, 59