We're like a gardener with a hose and our attention is water - we can water flowers or we can water weeds.
I love the ocean, wide-open space and trees, but I'm not a gardener or anything like that. I think I may be, eventually. I was raised in the city, so I don't have that skill set, but my heart is more with the dirt than the concrete. It's an unrequited love with nature - a one-way love affair.
I have a lot of nervous energy. Work is my best way of channelling that into something productive unless I want to wind up assaulting the postman or gardener.
I love decorating my home. I'm a gardener too, so that's usually something I have to play catch up with.
My kind of composing is more like the work of a gardener. The gardener takes his seeds and scatters them, knowing what he is planting but not quite what will grow where and when - and he won't necessarily be able to reproduce it again afterwards either.
He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants.
I don't have a gardener, because I enjoy pulling weeds. It's hard to explain, but there is something fulfilling about pulling out a weed and knowing that you got all the roots.
You need a good gardener and a good fisherman. The cook is not required.
I am very happy in second-hand bookshops; would a gardener not be happy in a garden?
So high do these plants stand in the favour of the Chinese gardener, that he will cultivate them extensively, even against the wishes of his employer; and, in many instances, rather leave his situation than give up the growth of his favourite flower.