Richmond Park Willows

The mole had been working very hard all morning, spring cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.

(The Wind in the willows. Kenneth Grahame)

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.

(Greek proverb)

Kew Gardens

In the oval flower bed the snail, whose shell had been stained red, blue, and yellow for the space of two minutes or so, now appeared to be moving very slightly in its shell, and next began to labour over the crumbs of loose earth which broke away and rolled down as it passed over them.

(Virginia Woolf. Kew Gardens)

Gardening is cheaper than therapy and you get tomatoes.

(Unknown)

Bodmin Moor

There were twelve rocks in all. They had been used before and were fairly round. The smallest was hurled first,  and Uther pitched it one hundred feet. St Tue's knees shook. What if his faith should fail now? He cast his eyes upwards. Then, oh, blessed miracle the rock became a feather in his hands, and he hurled it with such precision that it capped number one as if it had grown there.

(The legend of the Cheesewring. J Henry Harris)

With Jackson there was quite solitude. Just to sit and look at the landscape. An inner quietness. After dinner to sit on the back porch and look at the light. No need for talking, for any kind of communication.

( Lee Krasner)

Cornwall

I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travels sake. The great affair is to move.

(Robert Louis Stevenson)

The flavour of words is intensely anti-visual. Strictly speaking painting cannot be written about.

(Patrick Heron)

Cornwall

We passed an open door in Back Road West and through it saw some paintings of ships and houses on old pieces of paper and cardboard nailed up all over the wall...we knocked on the door and found Alfred Wallis.

(Ben Nicholson)

Anchor Chains coil around  the Gravestones in Barnoon cemetery. Mariners, master mariners, men lost at sea. At night the sea pounds Hellesover cliff and the noise is animal growling.

(Porthmeor Beach Helen Dunmore)

Cornwall

This is the landscape that has altered my life. The house in its setting is the source of all my painting.

(Patrick Heron)

Life is like a landscape. You live in the midst of it but can describe it only from the vantage point of Distance.

(Charles Lindburgh)

Cornwall

The inhabitants of Britain who dwell about the headland of Belerium are unusually hospitable and have adopted a civilized manner of life because of their intercourse with foreign traders. It is they who work the tin, extracting it by an ingenious method. 

(Pytheas c300-380BC)

Another Cornish tradition is to the effect that Joseph of Arimathea came in a boat to Cornwall and bought the boy Jesus with him: and the latter taught him how to extract tin and purge it of the wolfram. When the tin is flashed, then the tinner shouts, "Joseph was in the trade".

(Baring Gould. Cornwall)

Cornwall

Landscape by itself is meaningless, but it works on our feelings in profound ways, arousing in us a sense of ourselves in relation to the outside world.

(Christopher Neve.Unquiet Landscape)

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape. Something waits beneath it; the whole story doesn't show.

(Andrew Wyeth)