Quotessence
Home / Authors / Jeanette Lynes

Jeanette Lynes Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllSong Of MyselfWalt WhitmanFaceKindred SpiritLoveBeautiful LadyBlind LoveBurntCoupleEffective

Famous Jeanette Lynes Quotes

“The garden awoke in spring, glorious. Rhubarb, bellwort, bloodroot, blue squill; violets carpeted the earth, and in the woods, trilliums, twayblade, cowslips, cress, lady's slipper, wild iris, wild ginger, wild pussy willows, wild, wild everything. Robert Trout and his fiancée, Lavender, walked often there, and by the river. Her mother's old haunts. All of it a wonder to Robert, for his constant travels over the past years had begun to render most landscapes an indistinct blur. He'd not attended closely to the earth's springtime bounties; there was never time. Now he was like a boy, exclaiming over each tender sprout, each clump of new moss, and "Look, here's one with a thousand tiny white stars." Lavender told him the names of the many early blooms. And their meanings. It was her school of flowers, she quipped. "And here is one named especially for you, Robert---a trout lily. For us." They stopped. She showed him its lovely mottled leaves, creamy belled petals. "And see," she continued, "how it bows its head, as if too bashful to reveal its face. And like we humans, these beauties sleep at night and open themselves in morning's light.”

CoupleGardenEngagedFlowersGift Of Love
Book:The Apothecary's Garden
Create image

“Sun so generous it shall be you, Vapors lighting and shading my face it shall be you, You sweaty brooks and dew it shall be you, Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me it shall be you, Broad muscular fields, branches of liveoak, loving lounger in my winding paths, it shall be you, Hands I have taken, face I have kissed, mortal I have ever touched, it shall be you." Robert stopped, and surveyed her face. Waiting, Lavender supposed, for a response. "The passage strikes me as amorous and carnal, Sir. The parlor grows cold. We need more fire." She rose quickly and scratched around with kindling and sticks Arlo Snook had, in his habitual way, stacked neatly by the fireplace. The task allowed her to turn away from Robert, for in truth, Whitman's words unsettled her, their anatomy parts she'd heard only in ladies' physical education at Cobourg Academy.”

EffectiveErotic PoetryWalt WhitmanSong Of Myself
Book:The Apothecary's Garden
Create image

“Though the garden brought no profit in winter, it had its own beauty. The white canopy over the glass house sparkled on bright days. The gazing ball grew a crystalline moon. Downy snow on the herb beds and flower gardens caught the light in soft, variant blues and mauves. Reddily clustered berries against the drifts formed a pretty picture. A frosted crescent blanketed the bench where Lavender and her father used to sit, listening to Amaryllis Fitch's divine harp concerts. And the winter garden wasn't silent, either. Chickadees in their black caps twittered about, and Lavender left a pan of seeds out for them. Rabbits' tracks crooked across the slumbering perennials and bulbs.”

SnowNatures BeautyFaunaWinter Garden
Book:The Apothecary's Garden
Create image

“Moss was one of those things that, once one was aware of it, was everywhere. She knew its subspecies from botanical books: bearded moss, bog moss, grizzled emerald, twisted moss. Reindeer moss. Emerald tufted stubble. Toothless moss. Maidenhair. Wooly fringe. It was the earth's pantry, feeding its surroundings. Expansive green mother. Lavender recalled one species in her own garden that, to the touch, felt like her mother's hair. Mother-hair moss. In a floriography book, Lavender had read that moss stood for motherhood, charity. All the more to adore. She perused the ground, found: pocket moss pincushion bristle wasted-tea moss stubble-on-a-boy's-chin moss prickly oracle moss heart's tussle Oh, the tales moss told.”

SymbolicMossVarieties
Book:The Apothecary's Garden
Create image

“Lavender's thoughts returned to the poetry, and Robert reading it, canting, rich-toned, about hands, kisses. It shall be you. Having no smelling salts nearby, Lavender moved matters to a more pragmatic realm. "I must warm the tea," she told Robert. For the pot had sat, untouched, for some time, and had surely cooled. (In the kitchen, she loosened her collar, to alleviate her overheated state, to avoid becoming a sweaty brook.)”

EffectivenessWalt WhitmanSong Of Myself
Book:The Apothecary's Garden
Create image

“While Lavender wasn't keen on listening to a sermon (if this Whitman was, in fact, a clergy), she longed to study the book of Robert's face further, a book pulled, half burnt, from a fire. So much was written there, from the depths of suffering, Lavender didn't doubt, to ecstasy's heights, and the deep, innate sensibility required to worship---his word---at her floral cart, to see it for what it was, a little cathedral on wheels. She'd never met anyone who grasped flowers' import and beauty---profound, fleeting---to that extent; it was like meeting a kindred soul. Kindred, yet at the same time he seemed to her like someone who'd tumbled, in his best clothes, from some faraway constellation. She'd never met anyone like him.”

FaceKindred SpiritBurntUnique Person
Book:The Apothecary's Garden
Create image

“In the other story, the real one that must be nurtured with the gentleness of a seedling plant, two days hence would bring leaves, grass and Robert Trout. His visit must remain clandestine, his company continue; there were too many questions, too much poetry to hear, more harp song perhaps. And the genial hum of him. Peculiar to feel such kinship with a stranger. And sympathy for his rootless plight filled Lavender like an interior stream---a rill and beck that coursed through her veins and chased the coracle of her heart along at a pace so rapid she trembled at the risk of it capsizing, tossing her onto the shores of some barren, alien planet.”

Kindred SpiritYearning Of The HeartKeep Alive
Book:The Apothecary's Garden
Create image

“The onlookers' rudeness irked Lavender. How quickly their veneer of courtesy fell away. Beholding the man, they acted as if they viewed an exhibit in some monstrous hall of wonders. Terrible as the ruined side of his face was to look upon, balancing it, the good half was nothing short of godlike. He stopped in front of her floral cart. As if swished away by some invisible magician's wand, the gawking masses faded, leaving only quietude---a radical privacy---as though a glass dome ventilated with fresh oxygen closed over the two of them, and they alone existed in the world. "Your flowers steal my breath away," he said. He wished to make a purchase. "How many bouquets or tussie-mussies, Sir?" "All of them," the man said, then pointed to the sachet that had, earlier, toppled into the dirt. "What is this?" "A scent-filled sachet." "Sewn with your own hands, I presume?" the man asked. She nodded. "What fills it?" "Achillea millefolium. Yarrow. It heals. Protects. It's also known as a love charm." "Heals, you say?" The man sighed. "If only it could." Then he inquired the cost---of everything. Normally, Lavender ciphered like the wind, but a tallying void struck. She told him... a number... some totted up, air-castle sum bolted from her mouth. He paid her. The sum almost overflowed her hands. She transferred the bounty into her coin purse. "I worship at your cart," the man declared. "And tomorrow, with even the slightest sliver of serendipity, you shall hear Mr. Whitman's divine words.”

FaceFirst MetScarredSellout
Book:The Apothecary's Garden
Create image