Quotes: Fishing. Flattery. Flowers.

The idea in bold-face print is a summary of the quote. The number after the topic is the page on which the quote was found.

Fishing
Fishing 170 "There is a common and accepted fiction that fishermen go fishing to catch fish."Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Fishing 170 "Yet it’s really the dawn world that a [fisher] man goes out to see…full of robin song…." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Flattery
Flattery 60 "The arch-flatterer...is a man’s self." Bacon. 1597-1625. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Flattery 70 "He that is much flattered soon learns to flatter himself." Sam. Johnson. 1779-81. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Flattery 202 "A flatterer is a man that tells you your opinion and not his own." Anon. Early 18th century. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Flowers
Flowers 827 "…it seems as if such plants, as they grow only for beauty, ought to flourish in immortal youth, or, at least, to die before their sad decrepitude." Hawthorne: “Buds and Bird-Voices”

Flowers 140 "Until a few generations ago their [horsetails’] stems, embedded with tiny grains of silica, were used for scouring pots and pans; today they are weeds…." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Flowers 75 "Like many of our wild flowers, coltsfoot is an alien…brought here by early colonists for use in herbal medicine…decoction of the leaves and roots was believed to be good for coughs and those late winter colds that could turn into pneumonia." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Flowers 109 "There aren’t many flowers prettier than a dandelion, if you can look at a dandelion as a blossom, not a weed." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Flowers 110 "The dandelion’s old virtues are almost forgotten, nowadays …self-blanched inner leaves made an excellent spring green, fresh or cooked…roots were used for potherbs…wine was made from those bright blossoms…dried roots were ground and substituted for coffee…that was before the dandelion became a dooryard weed." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Flowers 126 May. "The bluet is a blossom of no particular consequence individually…but bluets grow in vast numbers in old pastures and on stony hillsides …some call them Quaker-ladies and some know them as Innocence… by June they will be lost among the buttercups and early daisies… in early May they are beautiful and insistent by their very numbers…bright embroidery on the first green frock of the rural countryside." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Flowers 134 "…it is hard to think of May without violets." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Flowers 135 The Jack-in-the-pulpit blossoms on all the hillsides of May. "And who can say that his [the jack-in-the-pulpit’s] voice isn’t heard all through the woodland and across the meadow …before he is through there is a veritable hallelujah of blossoming, a glory on all the hillsides of May." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Flowers 165 "June without roses, all kinds of roses, just wouldn’t be June." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Flowers 183 "By the first week in July the day lilies at the roadside and the brown-eyed Susans in the old pastures splash the countryside with Van Gogh orange." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Flowers 185 The daisy is called the "farmer's curse." "Daisies…sometimes called Farmer’s Curse…daisies beautify rural roadsides, but they invade meadows, pastures and all kinds of cultivated fields." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Flowers 187 "…wild chicory is warm blue, and Queen Anne’s lace is a white cloud at the roadside." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Flowers 198 "Chicory is…one of the few wildings of the season that have a color to match the July sky…some call it the blue daisy…bright as a summer morning…." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Flowers 202 "A single milkweed pod will spill 200 winged seeds to the wind." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Flowers 202 "…some species [of wild flowers] can lie dormant, awaiting a favorable season, thirty or forty years." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Flowers 206 "Soon the country roadside will gleam with goldenrod, late summer’s answer to June’s buttercups." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Flowers 218 The worts are a complete apothecary. "The worts, the persistent herbs of the old back-country apothecary, constitute a kind of folk poetry of human ills and aches, of pain and hope and trust, and inevitably of occasional cure." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Flowers 231 "One thing about the zinnia: It doesn’t need pampering; give it a rootbed, sunlight and a start, and it will make its own way…colors are strong, old-fashioned colors with little subtlety…generosity is magnificent; cut one bloom and two will take its place…liken it to the sunflower…there’s kinship, too, with the big daisies and, in lesser degree, with the asters…as native to the continent as the pumpkin…." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Flowers 241 "Goldenrod comes by mid-August, but it seems to rise to a peak of golden abundance in early September." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Flowers 241 "But the particular spectacle of September is the asters." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Flowers 254 America's wildflowers: a floral Eden. September. "With a greater wealth of wildflowers than any other land on earth, this country could be a floral Eden." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year

Flowers 262 September and burs. "Half an hour’s walk can provide half an hour’s work getting [burs] off your clothes, to which they cling with hooks and spurs and barbs and spines." Borland, Twelve Moons of the Year