“For the Earth itself is a blossom, she says,on the star tree,pale with luminousocean leaves.”

“Stars and blossoming fruit trees: Utter permanence and extreme fragility give an equal sense of eternity.”

“And everywhere girls, tumbling from trees like orange blossoms and hitting the earth with sickening thuds. They crack open.”

“Rather than turning over a new leaf, prune your tree so that new leaves continue to blossom.”

“Agatha surveys the garden, its rows of crinkled spring cabbages and beanstalks entwining bowers of hawthorn and hazel. The rosemary is dotted with pale blue stars of blossom and chives nod heads of tousled purple. New sage leaves sprout silver green among the brittle, frost-browned remains of last year's growth. Lily of the valley, she thinks, that will be out in the cloister garden at Saint Justina's by now.”

“If the foot of the trees were not tied to earth, they would be pursuing me.. For I have blossomed so much, I am the envy of the gardens.”