Steyn Viljoen

Just as someone with iron deficiency anemia craves ice (“pica”), I crave texture.

However, as I crossed the threshold, excitement gave way to disappointment. Instead of feeling connected to the natural world, I found myself strangely isolated within the confines of the glass walls. The minimalist aesthetic that I had admired from afar now felt cold and impersonal up close.

If you make lists of lofty goals, it can be easy to leave them to accumulate, as happens sometimes, into a mountain of to-do ’s and notes and half-forgotten plans. Dreaming alone is seductive, even a little sweet, since it lacks the pain of trying. So it feels proper to prize attempts more than dreams. You should have ideals, but you cannot only... See more

People who are good at solving poorly defined problems don't get the same kind of kudos. They don’t get any special titles or clubs. There is no test they can take that will spit out a big, honking number that will make everybody respect them.

To be a gardener is to give a fuck. To be a gardener is to be invested in a place—to know it, to protect it, to be present to it. How can we protect and heal ourselves and our planet if we’re not willing to step into, and value, the role of the gardener?

The physician and writer, Oliver Sacks, explains the value of gardens:

“As a writer, I find gardens essential to the creative process; as a physician, I take my patients to gardens whenever possible. All of us have had the experience of wandering through a lush garden or a timeless desert, walking by a river or an ocean, or climbing a mountain and... See more

I think bookstores turned out to be weirdly sticky simply because people like being in bookstores. Going to a bookstore is an aesthetic experience. It's fun. It's something to do with your family. It is a pleasant feeling to be surrounded by physical books. It is a pleasant feeling to browse. It is a pleasant feeling to be the kind of person who... See more

moments defined not by their grandeur, but by their authenticity, by the genuine connection they foster.

And this is crucial to our talk here, because these abilities – to link, annotate, change, summarize, copy, and share — these are the verbs of gardening.