Quote of the Day (Robin Lane Fox, on Why Good Writers Are Usually Not Good Gardeners)

“It is strangely difficult to attend to two things at once and it is a big mistake – made by outsiders – to think gardening is a mindless routine. If you are weeding, you are thinking about weeding. If you are deadheading, you have some spare capacity, but not consistently. A deadheader’s mind can wander, but it cannot focus on something as complex as the next sentence or the next twist in the story. I have never had an idea for one of my history books or hit on a good phrase while trying to root out bindweed or tidy up roses after flowering. Gardening is a process that takes about a quarter of an hour to become absorbing. A bout of it can then be therapeutic, but it does not unlock a writer’s brain. It is not punctuated by thoughts about a book. It is punctuated by thoughts about whether it is time for a break.”—British historian and gardening writer Robin Lane Fox, explaining why good writers don’t usually make good gardeners, in “Why Weeds and Words Don’t Mix,” The Financial Times, November 22-23, 2014