Vintage Garden Illustration for collage Art, Graphic Design, Papercrafts or Scrapbooking: The Gardener, 1889

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies,” my grandfather said.
A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made.
Or a garden planted.
Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die,
and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.

“It doesn't matter what you do,” he said, “so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.”
The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener
is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all;
the gardener will be there a lifetime.
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Vintage illustration of a young female gardener from 1889. 4.5 x 6" @ 300 ppi JPEG without a watermark here. Larger image size available for licensing. Please inquire.

Creative Commons Licence
From my personal collection of ephemera. These images are to be incorporated into your creative endeavors and not for resale or re-distribution "as-is". Please credit FieldandGarden.com as your source when sharing or publishing.

Vintage Art Appreciation: In the Garden by Jindřich Tomec

The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something.
Don’t wait for good things to happen to you.
If you go out and make some good things happen,
you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.
Barack Obama

This is the real secret of life --
to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now.
And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.
Alan Watts

Painting is titled "In the Garden," (?) c1920s by Jindřich Tomec (1863–1928). Originally found on Wikimedia. Digitally enhanced version of the painting as a 11" x 8" @ 300 ppi JPEG here.

Creative Commons Licence
Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain fine art are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

My Photo Journal: Sunny Possibilities

Listen to the mustn'ts, child.
Listen to the don'ts.
Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles,
the won'ts.
Listen to the never haves,
then listen close to me...
Anything can happen, child.
Anything can be.
Shel Silverstein

The bright sunbeam-yellow Black-eyed Susan blooms have been a staple in every garden I've started in the last 20 years. Originally a native wildflower of North America, this perennial cultivar is easy to grow, drough tolerant and attracts pollinators galore!

I currently have two clumps of Rudbeckia fulgida var. sullivantii 'Goldsturm' (originally just one clump but divided in its second year), and one stand of Rudbeckia hirta 'Prairie Sun' (outstandingly prolific this year) but am always on the hunt for more varieties as I expand my existing garden beds.

Photo © FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.

My Photo Journal: To Live (1)

To live is the rarest thing in the world.
Most people exist, that is all.
Oscar Wilde

I may not have gone where I intended to go,
but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Finish each day and be done with it.
You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in;
forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day.
You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit
to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Warm and sunny day down by the waterfront at Kiwanis Heydenshore Park in Whitby, Ontario. Heydenshore Pavilion (with the lighthouse a stone's throw away) is located within 15 acres of scenic parkland in Heydenshore Kiwanis Park. The park is on the shore of Lake Ontario adjacent to Whitby Shores Waterfront Trail, with a spectacular view of the lake from its open patio.

Starting in 2023, the historic Pump House on Whitby’s waterfront got a new lease on life when Town Brewery was awarded a five-year food and beverage pop-up licence to open the Waterfront Beer Garden. The restaurant is now closed for the season (re-opening May 2025) but the park remains busy with families that want to savour the still-mild October days.

© FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.