Behold this compost! behold it well!
Perhaps every mite has once form'd part of a sick person—Yet behold!
The grass covers the prairies,
The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden,
The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,
The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves,
The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree,
The he-birds carol mornings and evenings, while the she-birds sit on their nests,
The young of poultry break through the hatch'd eggs,
The new-born of animals appear—the calf is dropt from the cow, the colt from the mare,
Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark green leaves,
Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk;
The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour dead.

— Walt Whitman, from “This Compost!” (Leaves of Grass, 1867 edition)

***

Wherever you are on earth, it’s not too late to think about growing a garden,
and it’s never too late to read about it . . .

***

“With regard to human life, this emancipation from the cosmos is almost total. It is less so for animals, and the plants are, to a great extent, still embedded in and dependent on what is occurring in their earthly surroundings. That is why it is impossible to understand plant life without taking into account the fact that everything on Earth is actually only a reflection of what is taking place in the cosmos. This fact is hidden with human beings, because we have emancipated ourselves; we carry only the inner rhythms within us. The plants, however, are still very much a reflection of the cosmos.”

— Rudolf Steiner, Agriculture, Lecture 1