The Someday Garden Quotes

“It's a privilege to waste time - waste as much of it as you can. On things you love, on things you enjoy, on moments that make you so happy you could burst. And in the end, if you do it right, none of it will have been a waste at all.”
― Ashley Poston, The Someday Garden

“Gardens change. They’re supposed to. There are seasons to it all. New eras, new flowers, new storms that threaten to uproot it all. That’s why I love them so much, because if a garden can change and still be beautiful, why can’t we?”
― Ashley Poston, The Someday Garden

“What a glorious, golden thing to be alive.”
― Ashley Poston, The Someday Garden

“Maybe, I thought, the garden keeps you because you’re golden hour made real.”
― Ashley Poston, The Someday Garden

“Soph? Is everything okay?” Yes, but I didn’t think I would be for a long time. Yes, but I miss you. Yes, but the sky is a different color blue without you here. Yes, but only because I never really would be okay. Only different. Only changed—changing. Like a garden through the seasons. Yes, but only because I had to live through all the years you never would.”
― Ashley Poston, The Someday Garden

“The best stories are the ones that fill you with wonder. The ones you almost believe.”
― Ashley Poston, The Someday Garden

“We fell in love over and over and over again, season after season, in that someday garden on the cliffs by the sea.”
― Ashley Poston, The Someday Garden

“I wish I had done more corny things with her. I wish we’d stayed at more corny rentals, and watched more corny movies, and read more corny books. I would’ve bought a boom box and played “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” up at her bedroom window every night for the rest of my life it meant that she’d still be in it.”
― Ashley Poston, The Someday Garden

“His arms were strong, and his body was warm, smelling of lavender and honey and loose soil. As if he was made just for me, and how terrible that he was. “I’m glad it was you who walked through that door,” he whispered. “I’m glad it was you.”

And in those words, I heard a permission I hadn’t given myself in a very long time—to be messy and awful and undone. To be human. To be hurting.

To be alive.”
― Ashley Poston, The Someday Garden

“Was. Such a small word, full of so much history and heartbreak. It felt like an anchor that weighed me down under an ocean of grief.”
― Ashley Poston, The Someday Garden

“You’re different now, but so is this place. Gardens change. They’re supposed to. There are seasons to it all. New eras, new flowers, new storms that threaten to uproot it all. That’s why I love them so much, because if a garden can change and still be beautiful, why can’t we?”
― Ashley Poston, The Someday Garden

“Most mornings I get up to listen to the birds, and each summer I taste the honeysuckle, and I kiss Rus in the golden hours of dusk every chance I get. I kiss him in the mornings, too, and in the early afternoons, and in the gazebo of that someday garden, when we finally built it.
I never heard Harriet’s voice again, and while the gardens spun strange stories for other people, Lilymoor’s magic politely passed us by.
Then again, we didn’t need it anymore as we fell in love over and over and over again, season after season, in that someday garden on the cliffs by the sea.”
― Ashley Poston, The Someday Garden

“I found you," I echoed.
And suddenly he was pushing himself to sit up, sloughing off the vines that had crept around his limbs, golden-yellow petals falling away, and he brought me close, and kissed me like a man who had been wasting his life waiting for this moment. He tasted like honeysuckles, and I imagined that was how sunshine tasted, sweet and warm and comforting.”
― Ashley Poston, The Someday Garden

“Harrie collected untranslatable words, and I learned the language of flowers.
Roses for devotion, pink carnations and rosemary for remembrance, bluebells for kindness, zinnias for absent friends, red chrysanthemums for love, poppies for consolation, aloe for grief, arborvitae tufts for a steadfast friendship… butterfly weed to let one go.”
― Ashley Poston, The Someday Garden

“Hindsight was always sharp and bitter when you finally used it.”
― Ashley Poston, The Someday Garden

“For the next three hours we got ourselves lost in the beautiful manor and its wildflowers and mazelike hedges and native trees. The gardens were so serpentine that the world disappeared the moment you turned a corner. I couldn't tell you how the garden was laid out because it felt like between one step and another, you were always somewhere different. It constantly shifted from meadowy woodlands to pristine boxwoods to lattice walls of wild roses beside a bubbling brook that seemed to dip in and out of almost every scene like a well-known visitor.”
― Ashley Poston, The Someday Garden

“The world’s so quiet in the mornings”
― Ashley Poston, The Someday Garden

“Sprout”
― Ashley Poston, The Someday Garden

“I raised my glass and clinked it against hers once more, wishing that if there was magic somewhere in this world, it would be here in a small coastal Maine town, in the midst of this quickly fading summer with a man who made my heart bloom, where the nights were cool and the skies were bright and I just wanted with all of my heart to be home.”
― Ashley Poston, The Someday Garden

“I think I like you too,” I finally said, and the hunger in his face grew tender, and he kissed me again on the mouth just to taste the words.”
― Ashley Poston, The Someday Garden

“I think I had wanted to stay from the moment I set foot in Lilymoor, but I was scared that if I admitted that, time would start moving again, because time never stayed still, and I was afraid to lose this soft, eternal summer where the hours stretched like days and for a moment, if I closed my eyes and listened to the garden, I could pretend Harrie was sitting beside me.”
― Ashley Poston, The Someday Garden

“She’d ordered two beers already and had requested One Direction’s “What Makes You Beautiful” from Wykofski, and apparently every other hit song from their discography. The bartender looked like he was debating whether he was in a horror movie or a rom-com.

Neither, sadly.”
― Ashley Poston, The Someday Garden

“She’d ordered two beers already and had requested One Direction’s “What Makes You Beautiful” from Wykofski, and apparently every other hit song form their discography. The bartender looked like he was debating whether he was in a horror movie or a rom-com.

Neither, sadly.”
― Ashley Poston, The Someday Garden

“After a moment, he leaned away from me and said, “It’s getting late. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” I agreed.

And still, the trumpet vines bloomed.”
― Ashley Poston, The Someday Garden

“Who was Harrie?

She was fries with vinegar and cotton candy stuck to the roof of your mouth. She was sour lemonade and bright laughs and romance novels with spines cracked at the sex scenes. She was good, and loud, and larger-than-life, so that when she left, she took all the air out of the room, too.”
― Ashley Poston, The Someday Garden

“You got so used to having something—to it being there—that when it no longer was you kicked yourself for wondering why you hadn’t spent more time talking with them, and sharing stories, and committing them to memory.

Hindsight was always sharp and bitter when you finally used it.”
― Ashley Poston, The Someday Garden

“Treat yourself like you treat your flowers, sprout,” she said softly. “Be kind.”
― Ashley Poston, The Someday Garden

“I’ve always understood plants.

Give them a little water, a little sunlight, a little love, and they rarely surprise you. People, on the other hand?

We were strange, and confusing, and sticky. We laughed when we cried and cried when we laughed, we danced when we were sad and danced when we were happy, we grew hungry for food, for touch, for far-off places—

We fell in love with the wrong people, and we sobbed on the kitchen floor when the heartache sent us to our knees. We brought over Chinese takeout, and we plotted murders and we messed up, again, and again, and again.

We were elusive. When we got sick—really sick—we couldn’t be saved with sunlight and water and new soil. We couldn’t be trimmed off and propagated. And no matter how much time, or hard work, or effort, sometimes all you could do was sit at our bedside and talk with us.

And it would never be enough to keep us alive.”
― Ashley Poston, The Someday Garden

“I’ve always understood plants.

Give them a little water, a little sunlight, a little love, and they rarely surprise you. People, on the other hand?

We were strange, and confusing, and sticky. We laughed when we cried and cried when we laughed, we danced when we were sad and danced when we were happy, we grew hungry for food, for touch, for far-off places—

We fell in love with the wrong people, and we sobbed on the kitchen floor when the heartache sent us to our knees. We brought over Chinese takeout, and we plotted murders and we messed up, again, and again, and again.

We were elusive. When we got sick—really sick—we couldn’t be saved with sunlight and water and new soil. We couldn’t be trimmed off and propagated. And no matter how much time, or hard work, or effort, sometimes all you could do was sit at our bedside and talk with us.

And it would never be enough to keep up alive.”
― Ashley Poston, The Someday Garden

“We couldn’t be more different, but there is this feeling when you meet someone special. Like finding a lost puzzle piece and clicking it into place—there’s a certainty to it. A ‘Yes, you are my person.’ The person you’re going to grow old beside. The person you want in your commune when the world goes to hell. The person who inherits the solemn duty of deleting your internet history when you die.”
― Ashley Poston, The Someday Garden