We have to live as close as possible to all that leaves the door open to the ‘holy.’ … The problem is not to sink into apathy. The chores, the household tasks, do provide a kind of frame, but I get more and more impatient with bothering about things…. Gardening is altogether different. There the door is always open into the ‘holy’—growth, birth, death. Every flower holds the whole mystery in its short cycle, and in the garden we are never far away from death, the fertilizing, good, creative death.

May Sarton