Some words from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I recently re-read this book, which I vaguely remembered from my childhood
In the midst of a busy stressful project, it was the perfect soothing read. The endless descriptions of a garden coming to life, green things poking through the soil etc are wondrous. And the whole context of the story, a British child orphaned in the India of Victorian colonial times, is something that clearly went over my head as a child. Fascinating to revisit …
On Th’ Whole Orange
“When I was at school my jography told as th’ world was shaped lik a orange an’ I found out before I was ten that th’ whole orange doesn’t belong to nobody. No-one owns more than his bit of a quarter an’ there’s times it seems like there’s not ennow quarters to go round. But don’t you — none o’ you — think as you own th’ whole orange or you’ll find out you’re mistaken, an you won’t find it out without hard knocks.
What children learns from children is that there’s no sense in grabbin’ at th’ whole orange– peel an’ all. If you do you’ll likely not get even th’ pips, an’ them’s too bitter to eat”
– – the wisdom of Mrs Sowerby