Planted Trees Quotes & Sayings

While he digs he is free to let his mind wander, and he dreams his kingdom of pear trees in the orchard across to his left, growing skywards, gnarling, putting forth fat green soft fruits with ease each year. The trees that already grow in the orchards he loves almost as women in his life; the Catherine pear, the Chesil or pear Nouglas, the great Kentish pear, the Ruddick, the Red Garnet, the Norwich, the Windsor, the little green pear ripe at Kingsdon Feast; all thriving where they were planted in his father's ground at Lytes Cary before the management of the estate became his own responsibility as the eldest son. So much has happened these last six years since his father handed over and left for his house in Sherborne: there have been births and deaths - Anys herself was taken from him only last year. But the pear trees live on, reliably flowering and yielding variable quantities as an annual crop that defines the estate, and he has plans to add more. — Jane Borodale

Across the road from my cabin was a huge clear-cut
hundreds of acres of massive spruce stumps interspersed with tiny Douglas firs
products of what they call "Reforestation," which I guess makes the spindly firs en masse a "Reforest," which makes an individual spindly fir a "Refir," which means you could say that Weyerhauser, who owns the joint, has Refir Madness, since they think that sawing down 200-foot-tall spruces and replacing them with puling 2-foot Refirs is no different from farming beans or corn or alfalfa. They even call the towering spires they wipe from the Earth's face forever a "crop"
as if they'd planted the virgin forest! But I'm just a fisherman and may be missing some deeper significance in their nomenclature and stranger treatment of primordial trees. — David James Duncan

If the Olive Trees knew the hands that planted them, Their Oil would become Tears. — Mahmoud Darwish

Tree of Liberty: A tree set up by the people, hung with flags and devices, and crowned with a cap of liberty. The Americans of the United States planted poplars and other trees during the war of independence, "as symbols of growing freedom." The Jacobins in Paris planted their first tree of liberty in 1790. The symbols used in France to decorate their trees of liberty were tricoloured ribbons, circles to indicate unity, triangles to signify equality, and a cap of liberty. Trees of liberty were planted by the Italians in the revolution of 1848. — E. Cobham Brewer

She was green when green wasn't in. From sea to shining sea, Lady Bird Johnson has left her legacy in a more beautiful America. From millions of trees and wildflowers planted, to interstates free from billboards and replaced with green. — David Mixner

God planted the seeds of all the trees," continued Hetty, after a moment's pause, "and you see to what a height and shade they have grown! So it is with the Bible. You may read a verse this year, and forget it, and it will come back to you a year hence, when you least expect to remember it. — James Fenimore Cooper

The "Avenue," so called by the Newbridge people, was a stretch of road four or five hundred yards long, completely arched over with huge, wide-spreading apple-trees, planted years ago by an eccentric old farmer. Overhead was one long canopy of snowy fragrant bloom. Below the boughs the air was full of a purple twilight and far ahead a glimpse of painted sunset sky shone like a great rose window at the end of a cathedral aisle. — L.M. Montgomery

Sadhana You may have noticed this about yourself: when you are feeling pleasant, you want to expand; when you are fearful, you want to contract. Try this. Sit for a few minutes in front of a plant or tree. Remind yourself that you are inhaling what the tree is exhaling, and exhaling what the tree is inhaling. Even if you are not yet experientially aware of it, establish a psychological connection with the plant. You could repeat this several times a day. After a few days, you will start connecting with everything around you differently. You won't limit yourself to a tree. Using this simple process, we at the Isha Yoga Center have unleashed an environmental initiative in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, under which twenty-one million trees have been planted since 2004. We spent several years planting trees in people's minds, which is the most difficult terrain! Now transplanting those onto land happens that much more effortlessly. — Sadhguru

I have planted over 6,000 trees at home in Scotland, some of them oak. I'd like my children to be able to watch them grow. — Rory Stewart

She had witnessed the world's most beautiful things, and allowed herself to grow old and unlovely. She had felt the heat of a leviathan's roar, and the warmth within a cat's paw. She had conversed with the wind and had wiped soldier's tears. She had made people see, she'd seen herself in the sea. Butterflies had landed on her wrists, she had planted trees. She had loved, and let love go. So she smiled. — Sonya Hartnett

He was one of the most sincere tree-lovers I ever knew. About twenty years before his death he made choice of a plot in the Yosemite cemetery on the north side of the Valley, not far from the Yosemite Fall, and selecting a dozen or so of seedling sequoias in the Mariposa grove he brought them to the Valley and planted them around the spot he had chosen for his last rest. The ground there is gravelly and dry; by careful watering he finally nursed most of the seedlings into good, thrifty trees, and doubtless they will long shade the grave of their blessed lover and friend. — John Muir

Grains of error planted innocently in a well-kept greenhouse can become giant poisonous trees. — Thomas Merton

I am grateful that my childhood was spent in a spot where there were many trees, trees of personality, planted and tended by hands long dead, bound up with everything of joy or sorrow that visited our lives. When I have "lived with" a tree for many years it seems to me like a beloved human companion. — L.M. Montgomery

Shri Ram said: "Ever since I have been separated from you, Sita, everything to me has become its very reverse. The fresh and tender leaves on the trees look like tongues of fire; nights appear as dreadful as the night of final dissolution and the moon scorches like the sun. Beds of lotuses are like so many spears planted on the ground, while rain-clouds pour boiling oil as it were. Those that were friendly before, have now become tormenting; the cool, soft and fragrant breezes are now like the hissing serpent. One's agony is assuaged to some extent even by speaking of it, but to whom shall I speak about it? For there is no one who will understand. The reality about the chord of love that binds you and me, dear, is known to my heart alone; and my heart ever abides with you. Know this to be the essence of my love. — Tulsidas

The school children of New York State planted more than 200,000 trees within ten years from the time Arbor Day was recognized. Few similar efforts in years have been more thoroughly commendable than the effort to get our people practically to show their appreciation of the beauty and usefulness of trees. — Andrew S. Draper

Tropical trees had been planted throughout the room, along with bright flowering plants that were busy committing the olfactory floral equivalent of aggravated assault. — Jim Butcher

I'd love to see a new form of social security ... everyone taught how to grow their own; fruit and nut trees planted along every street, parks planted out to edibles, every high rise with a roof garden, every school with at least one fruit tree for every kid enrolled. — Jackie French

Never underestimate your abilities. You may never know you were the one who planted the seed that changed someone's life. From little seeds grow beautiful large plants and trees that add beauty to the world. — Raven Williams

People have rituals for communing with the dead, rituals that depend more on the idiosyncrasies of the individual than on the influence of culture. Some visit gravesites. Some talk to portraits, or mantelpiece urns. Some go to spots favored by the deceased during life, or mouth silent prayers in houses of worship, or have trees planted in memory in some far-off land. The common denominator, of course, is a sense beyond logic that the dead are aware of all this, that they can hear the prayers and witness the deeds and feel the ongoing love and longing. People seem to find that sense comforting. I don't believe any of it. I've never seen a soul depart from a body. I've never been haunted by a ghost, angry or loving. I've never been rewarded or punished or touched by some traveler from the undiscovered country. I know as well as I know anything the dead are simply dead. — Barry Eisler

she approached the town of Pampa. This part of the Panhandle was so flat that it was paradoxically vertiginous, a two-dimensional planetary surface off which, having no trace of topography to hold on to, you felt you could fall or be swept. No relief in any sense of the word. The land so commercially and agriculturally marginal that Pampans thought nothing of wasting it by the half acre, so that each low and ugly building sat by itself. Dusty dead or dying halfheartedly planted trees floated by in Leila's headlights. To her they were Texan and therefore lovely in their way. The Sonic parking — Jonathan Franzen

Home was something besides so much lumber and plaster. You built your thoughts into the frame work. You planted a little of your heart with the trees and the shrubbery. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

Trees are contagious; as soon as one neighborhood or street is planted, citizen pressure builds up for action from the next street. — William H. Whyte

Could this be a picture of me praying by the kitchen sink while I'm washing my dishes? It could be. And, yes, the Lord assures me that my eyes might be open as I take in the view from the backyard. I see the trees that my husband and I planted together, and I praise God for His gift of a husband. Could this be a picture of me praising the Lord as I snuggle in close to my husband — Darlene Schacht

A big war is coming. Bigger than the one they were starting when I left. It'll go hard on England, but I expect we'll survive. I missed the other war, she said. I mean to be present for this one. Samuel and I had never really thought about war. Why, she said, the signs are all over Africa. India too, I expect. First there's a road built to where you keep your goods. Then your trees are hauled off to make ships and captain's furniture. Then your land is planted with something you can't eat. Then you're forced to work it. That's happening all over Africa, she said. Burma too, I expect. — Alice Walker

The episcopal palace was a huge and beautiful house, built of stone at the beginning of the last century by M. Henri Puget, Doctor of Theology of the Faculty of Paris, Abbe of Simore, who had been Bishop of D - in 1712. This palace was a genuine seignorial residence. Everything about it had a grand air, - the apartments of the Bishop, the drawing-rooms, the chambers, the principal courtyard, which was very large, with walks encircling it under arcades in the old Florentine fashion, and gardens planted with magnificent trees. In the dining-room, a long and superb gallery which was situated on the ground-floor and opened on the gardens, M. Henri Puget had entertained in state, on July 29, 1714, My Lords Charles Brulart de Genlis, archbishop; Prince — Victor Hugo

What man of sense will agree with the statement that the first, second and third days, in which the evening and morning were named, were without sun, moon and stars? What man is found such an idiot as to suppose that God planted trees in Paradise, in Eden, Like a Husbandman? — Origen

I never stop making sure that what I say is the best of what could be said about a particular thing. It's a constant evolution. If I planted a tree one way yesterday, and somebody tells me of a better way to plant a tree, I think, 'You know, they're right, that's better.' Then I change my way to accommodate the new way of planting trees. — Martha Stewart

Upon the highest ridge of that round hill covered with planted oaks, the shafts of the trees show in the light like the columns of a ruin. — Dorothy Wordsworth

Many trees planted around a home reduce the need for air conditioning. — Federico Pena

The lives of people are like young trees in a forest. They are being choked by climbing vines. The vines are old thoughts and beliefs planted by dead men. — Sherwood Anderson

Contentment has learned how to find out what she needs to know. Last year she went on a major housecleaning spree. First she stood on her head until all the extra facts fell out. Then she discarded about half her house. Now she knows where every thing comes from - who dyed the yarn dark green and who wove the rug and who built the loom, who made the willow chair, who planted the apricot trees. She made the turquoise mugs herself with clay she found in the hills beyond her house.
When Contentment is sad, she takes a mud bath or goes to the mountains until her lungs are clear. When she walks through an unfamiliar neighborhood, she always makes friends with the local cats. — J. Ruth Gendler

The desired Islamic state might be likened to an orchard planted with olive and palm trees that will take a relatively long time to produce fruit. — Yusuf Al-Qaradawi

We are a free people; and now you have planted in our country the title deeds of our future slavery. You are neither god nor demon; who are you, then, to make slaves? Orou! You understand the language of these men, tell us all, as you have told me, what they have written on this sheet of metal: This country is ours. This country yours? And why? Because you have walked thereon? If a Tahitian landed one day on your shores, and scratched on one of your rocks or on the bark of your trees: This country belongs to the people of Tahiti - what would you think? — Denis Diderot

To me, the poor are like Bonsai trees. When you plant the best seed of the tallest tree in a six-inch deep flower pot, you get a perfect replica of the tallest tree, but it is only inches tall. There is nothing wrong with the seed you planted; only the soil-base you provided was inadequate.
Poor people are bonsai people. There is nothing wrong with their seeds. Only society never gave them a base to grow on. — Muhammad Yunus

By the craggy hill-side,
Through the mosses bare,
They have planted thorn-trees
For pleasure here and there.
If any man so daring
As dig them up in spite,
He shall find their sharpest thorns
In his bed at night. — William Allingham

I invited Intuition to stay in my house when my roommates went North. I warned her that I am territorial and I keep the herb jars in alphabetical order. Intuition confessed that she has a 'spotty employment record.' She was fired from her last job for daydreaming.

When Intuition moved in, she washed all the windows, cleaned out the fireplace, planted fruit trees, and lit purple candles. She doesn't cook much. She eats beautiful foods, artichokes, avocadoes, persimmons and pomegranates, wild rice with wild mushrooms, chrysanthemum tea. She doesn't have many possessions. Each thing is special. I wish you could see the way she arranged her treasures on the fireplace mantle. She has a splendid collection of cups, bowls, and baskets.
Well, the herbs are still in alphabetical order, and I can't complain about how the house looks. Since Intuition moved in, my life has been turned inside out. — J. Ruth Gendler

The guy who owned that island was from Oregon and he decided that he wanted to have an Oregon feeling to it, so he planted pine trees all over the place! — Christopher Atkins

The bushes puzzled him, they were so big, almost trees, some twice his height, and there seemed so many. They were planted all along the edges of the towering droop-limbed hemlocks that sheltered the place, and in the acres sheltered there were dozens of great rectangular clumps like loaves of porous green bread. The bushes were evergreen. With their zigzag branches and long oval leaves fingering in every direction they seemed to belong to a different climate, to a different land, whose gravity pulled softer than this one. — John Updike

We had to build a city not for businesses or automobiles, but for children and thus for people. Instead of building highways, we restricted car use. We invested in high-quality sidewalks, pedestrian streets, parks, bicycle paths, libraries; we got rid of thousands of cluttering commercial signs and planted trees. All our everyday efforts have one objective: Happiness. — Enrique Penalosa

Me dad planted that tree,' she said absently, pointing out through the old cracked window.
The great beech filled at least half the sky and shook shadows all over the house.
Its roots clutched the slope like a giant hand, holding the hill in place. Its trunk writhed with power, threw off veils of green dust, rose towering into the air, branched into a thousand shaded alleys, became a city for owls and squirrels. I had thought such trees to be as old as the earth, I never dreamed that a man could make them. Yet it was Granny Trill's dad who had planted this tree, had thrust in the seed with his finger. How old must he have been to leave such a mark? Think of Granny's age, and add his on top, and you were back at the beginning of the world. — Laurie Lee

I haven't seen anyone for years," he said, "not anyone. I can hardly remember how to speak. I keep forgetting words. I practise, you see. I practise by talking to ... talking to ... what are those things people think you're mad if you talk to? Like George the Third."
"Kings?" suggested Ford.
"No, no," said Arthur. "The things he used to talk to. We're surrounded by them for Heaven's sake. I've planted hundreds myself. They all died. Trees! I practise by talking to trees. What's that for?"
Ford still had his hand stuck out. Arthur looked at it with incomprehension.
"Shake," prompted Ford. — Douglas Adams

A person should be buried only half a meter, or two feet, below the surface. Then a tree should be planted there. He should be buried in a coffin that decays so that when you plant a tree on top the tree will take something out of his substance and change it into tree-substance. When you visit the grave you don't visit a dead man, you visit a living being who was just transformed into a tree. You say, "This is my grandfather, the tree is growing well, fantastic." You can develop a beautiful forest that will be more beautiful than a normal forest because the trees will have their roots in graves. It will be a park, a place for pleasure, a place to live, even a place to hunt. — Friedensreich Hundertwasser

Through it all we held fast to the concept of the clock with no hands. Tasks were completed, sump pumps manned, sandbags piled, trees planted, shirts ironed, hems stitched, and yet we reserved the right to ignore the hands that kept on turning. — Patti Smith

Revered as God's servants, the bees they lure provide mead and honey for the table and beeswax candles for church services, which is why many churches planted linden trees in their courtyards. The bee-church connection became so strong that once, at the turn of the fifteenth century, the villagers of Mazowsze passed a law condemning honey thieves and hive vandals — Diane Ackerman

I thought about how we tilled and cultivated the land, planted trees on it, fenced it, built houses on it, and did everything we could to hold off the eternity of distance - anything to give the landscape some sort of human scale. No matter what we did to try and form the West, however, the West inevitably formed us instead. — Craig Johnson

Principal courtyard, which was very large, with walks encircling it under arcades in the old Florentine fashion, and gardens planted with magnificent trees. In the dining-room, a long and superb gallery which was situated on the ground-floor and opened on the gardens, M. Henri Puget had entertained in state, on July 29, 1714, My Lords Charles Brulart de Genlis, archbishop; Prince d'Embrun; Antoine de Mesgrigny, the capuchin, Bishop of Grasse; Philippe de Vendome, Grand Prior of France, Abbe of Saint Honore de Lerins; Francois de Berton de Crillon, bishop, Baron de Vence; Cesar de Sabran de Forcalquier, bishop, Seignor of Glandeve; and Jean Soanen, Priest of the Oratory, preacher in ordinary to the king, bishop, Seignor of Senez. The portraits of these seven reverend personages decorated this apartment; and this memorable date, the 29th of July, 1714, was there engraved in letters of gold on a table of white marble. — Victor Hugo

Haska - a dim legendary figure of a generation ago, who went back up the mountain and cleared six acres of brush in the tiny valley that took his name. He broke the soil, reared stone walls and a house, and planted apple trees. And already the site of the house is undiscoverable, the location of the stone walls may be deduced from the configuration of the landscape, and I am renewing the battle, putting in angora goats to browse away the brush that has overrun Haska's clearing and choked Haska's apple trees to death. So I, too, scratch the land with my brief endeavour and flash my name across a page of legal script ere I pass and the page grows musty. — Jack London

I started doing '30 Rock' and started writing 'Mystery Team' at the beginning of that. While I was doing 'Mystery Team,' I started practicing stand-up. While I was doing stand up, I got 'Community.' It's like I planted trees six years ago, and now they have fruit. — Donald Glover

She left, never to return. I planted a tree and a seed each time I thought of her. I grew a small forest and a large garden and had no one to give the orchids to. — Darnell Lamont Walker

You have put your two hands upon me, and your mouth,
You have said my name as a prayer.
Here where trees are planted by water
I have watched your eyes, cleansed from regret,
And your lips, closed over all that love cannot say. — Louise Bogan

Lets toil under the sun to build poles of love. And let our roots be planted like strong trees that strong winds can't move. — Auliq Ice

[But] just as unseen worlds unfold to those who read a book, so worlds hidden to hurried sight unfold to those who choose to spend more than a few moments cultivating their relationship with nature. Paying attention is the key: we interact with each other when we allow it to engage our attention, when we 'read' it with absorption, as we would read a book. [Even] the ficus tree in the office cubicle or the oak planted in the urban sidewalk offers undreamed-of wonders to those who pay attention. Just because to literate people reading a book is unremarkable, available to anyone who can learn the alphabet, it is no less magical. Among my people, children are taught to read books; among some other peoples, children are taught to read the trees. — Priscilla Stuckey

Before I opened my computer in the parking lot today, I relived one of my favorite memories. It's the one with Woody and me sitting on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum after it's closed. We're watching people parade out of the museum in summer shorts and sandals. The trees to the south are planted in parallel lines. The water in the fountain shoots up with a mist that almost reaches the steps we sit on. We look at silver-haired ladies in red-and-white-print dresses. We separate the mice from the men, the tourists from the New Yorkers, the Upper East Siders from the West Siders. The hot-pretzel vendor sells us a wad of dough in knots with clumps of salt stuck on top. We make our usual remarks about the crazies and wonder what it would be like to live in a penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue overlooking the Met. We laugh and say the same things we always say. We hold hands and keep sitting, just sitting, as the sun beings to set. It's a perfect afternoon. — Diane Keaton

God designs that we should enjoy ourselves. I do not believe in a religion that makes people gloomy, melancholy, miserable and ascetic. . . . I should
not think there was anything great or good associated with that, while everything around, the trees, birds, flowers and green fields, were so pleasing, the insects and bees buzzing and fluttering, the lambs frolicking and playing. While everything else enjoyed life, why should not we? But we want to do it correctly
and not pervert any of these principles that God has planted in
the human family. — John Taylor

Happiness would prevail where trees were planted. — Stefan Zweig

( referring the old high level road) how come there are so many Bo trees along the old road especially where there was a junction of sorts? I wondered did a long time before I gathered much later in life that all those trees marked the spots where the legendary Buddhist revivalist Anagarika Dharmapala preached during his campaign and the British, sharp enough to observe that behind the Buddhist campaign was a national campaign, which in turn, was a political campaign, which again meant that the British rule was threatened, countered by building a public lavatory wherever the Buddhists had planted a Bo tree, and true enough there were public lavatories near Bo trees at Borella, Pettah, and Kirulapona — Tissa Abeysekara

Shade for a man
And shelter for animals,
Planted in your name,
May you be the same for those around you,
Every year the same. — Nancy J Cavanaugh

Is that a good definition of marking the ageing watershed? That moment when you realize - quite rationally, quite unemotionally - that the world in the not-so-distant future will not contain you: that the trees you planted will continue growing but you will not be there to see them. — William Boyd

Not all dreams need to be realized ... Fred finally achieved his pilot's license but couldn't afford to fly a plane. I wrote incessantly but published nothing. Through it all we held fast to the concept of the clock with no hands. Tasks were completed, sump pumps manned, sandbags piled, trees planted, shirts ironed, hems stitched, and yet we reserved the right to ignore the hands that kept on turning. Looking back, long after his death, our way of living seems a miracle, one that could only be achieved by the silent synchronization of the jewels and gears of a common mind. — Patti Smith

The trees bathed their great heads in the waves of the morning, while their roots were planted deep in gloom; save where on the borders of the sunshine broke against their stems, or swept in long streams through their avenues, washing with brighter hue all the leaves over which it flowed; revealing the rich brown of the dacayed leaves and fallen pine-cones, and the delicate greens of the long grasses and tiny forests of moss that covered the channel over which it passed in the motionless rivers of light. — George MacDonald

The forest has been growing for hundreds of years. Each time a child is born, a tree is planted. You could see from his tree how old a person was. The tall and thick tree trunks, which gave the most shade, belonged to people who had already returned to the spirit world. But the trees of the living and the dead stood in the same grove, sought their nourishment from the same soil and the same rain. They stood there waiting for the children that were not yet born, the trees that had not yet been planted. In that way the forest would grow, and the age of the village would be visible for all time. No one could tell from a tree whether someone was dead, only that he had been born. — Henning Mankell

Vasco lived in Mangrove Heights, on a bluff overlooking the river. The first time Jed saw the house, he couldn't help thinking of the Empire of Junk. Towers jostled with gables, beams with columns. Gargoyles leered from the eaves, tongues sharp as the heads of arrows, eyes like shelled eggs. The front garden had been planted with all kinds of trees, so the house seemed to skulk. The path to the front door crackled with dead leaves. He could smell plaster, the inside of birds' nests, river sewage.
'I should have been born in a place like this,' Jed said, but Vasco was opening the door and didn't hear. — Rupert Thomson

Permission to buy apricots and oranges from my own trees, the ones my great grandfather planted and i kept alive in drought and war — Michelle Cohen Corasanti

Generally the men always tried to appear strong; they walked tall, heads upright, arms steady at the sides, and feet firmly planted like trees. Solid, Jericho walls of men. But when they went out in the bush to relieve themselves and nobody was looking, the fell apart like crumbling towers and wept with the wretched grief of forgotten concubines.
And when they returned to the presence of their women and children and everybody else, they stuck hands deep inside torn pockets until they felt their dry thighs, kicked little stones out of the way, and erected themselves like walls again, but then the women, who knew all the ways of weeping and all there was to know about falling apart, would not be deceived; they gently rose from the hearths, beat dust off their skirts, and planted themselves like rocks in front of their men and children and shacks, and only then did all appear almost tolerable. — NoViolet Bulawayo

You who let yourselves feel: enter the breathing
That is more than your own.
Let it brush your cheeks
As it divides and rejoins behind you.
The trees you planted in childhood have grown
Too heavy. You cannot bring them along.
Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold. — Rainer Maria Rilke

I never before knew the full value of trees ... What would I not give that the trees planted nearest round the house at Monticello were full grown. — Thomas Jefferson

Her ashes are scattered under the oak tree in the southernmost farm fields.
Louise remembered that tree from the tour with Laurent - firmly planted, ancient, maybe even wise, reaching for the sky. It seemed a tree that would share the secrets of the universe if one sat underneath its branches long enough, like the stories of the Buddha she'd heard in Sunday school as a kid. — Jessica Rosevear Fox

China has led the world in new tree planting; in fact, over the last several years, China has planted 40 percent as many tress as the rest of the world put together. Since 1981, all citizens of China older than age eleven (and younger than sixty) have been formally required to plant at least three trees per year. To date, China has planted approximately 100 million acres of new tress. Following China, the countries with the largest net gains in tress include the U.S., India, Vietnam, and Spain. — Al Gore

And how do trees register that the warmer days are because of spring and not late summer? The appropriate reaction is triggered by a combination of day length and temperature. Rising temperatures mean it's spring. Falling temperatures mean it's fall. Trees are aware of that as well. And that's why species such as oaks or beeches, which are native to the Northern Hemisphere, adapt to reversed cycles in the Southern Hemisphere if they are exported to New Zealand and planted there. And what this proves as well, by the way, is that trees must have a memory. How else could they inwardly compare day lengths or count warm days? — Peter Wohlleben

If God had meant for us to have fiberglass boats, he would have planted fiberglass trees. — L. Francis Herreshoff

Last century, when the beams needed replacing, carpenters used oak trees that had been planted in 1386 when the dining hall was first built. The 14th-century builder had planted the trees in anticipation of the time, hundreds of years in the future, when the beams would need replacing. Did the carpenters plant new trees to replace the beams again a few hundred years from now? — Danny Hillis

The wind comes across the plains not howling but singing. It's the difference between this wind and its big-city cousins: the full-throated wind of the plains has leeway to seek out the hidden registers of its voice. Where immigrant farmers planted windbreaks a hundred and fifty years ago. it keens in protest; where the young corn shoots up, it whispers as it passes, crossing field after field in its own time, following eastward trends but in no hurry to find open water. You can't usually see it in paintings, but it's an important part of the scenery. — John Darnielle

Be sure to lay wide streets planted with shady trees, every other of a quick-growing variety. Be sure that there is plenty of space for lawns and gardens, reserved large areas for football, hockey and parks. Earmark areas for Hindu temples, Mohammedan mosques and Christian churches. — Jamsetji Tata

It was different, though, knowing something in your thoughts and then hearing it confirmed, made real, planted in the world like a tree — Guy Gavriel Kay

I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods. — Wendell Berry

The green painted concrete out in front of the house, which at first seemed like a novel way to save money on lawn-moving, was now just plain depressing. The hot water came reluctantly to the kitchen sink as if from miles away, and even then without conviction, and sometimes a pale brownish color. Many of the windows wouldn't open properly to let flies out. Others wouldn't shut properly to stop them getting in. The newly planted fruit trees died in the sandy soil of a too-bright backyard and were left like grave-markers under the slack laundry lines, a small cemetery of disappointment. It appeared to be impossible to find the right kinds of food, or learn the right way to say even simple things. The children said very little that wasn't a complaint. — Shaun Tan

If a separate personal Paradise exists for each of us, mine must be irreparably planted with trees of words which the wind silvers like poplars, by people who see their confiscated justice given back, and by birds that even in the midst of truth of death insist on singing in Greek and saying eros, eros, eros. — Odysseus Elytis