A Gardener’s Reading, 17-20 of 30 In this season of choir concerts and holiday musicales, I’ve been thinking about the many voices that sing of the importance of gardening – not just as a way to create beauty or grow food, but as an essential source of meaning in our lives. People are creative — they want to make things,…
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A Gardener’s Reading, 16 of 30 Edited by Jane Garmey (Algonquin Books, 1999) Jane Garmey’s expansive collection of poems, essays and excerpts includes writers absolutely identified with a life in the dirt (Vita Sackville-West, Elizabeth Lawrence, Katharine S. White) as well as those whose fame grew from prose not plants (Jamaica Kincaid, Charles Kuralt, M.F.K. Fisher, Alexander Pope). Taken as…
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A Gardener’s Reading, 15 of 30 By Suzy Bales (Rodale Press, 2007) Gardeners in the North are often told to console themselves through the long winter by planting a garden with “winter interest.” Give yourself something to look at during that fourth or fifth gray, cold month, the mantra goes, about enjoying your garden in winter. Suzy Bales miraculously shows…
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A Gardener’s Reading, 14 of 30 By Rosalind Creasy (Periplus Editions, 1999) Several years ago, I heard Rosalind Creasy talk about her garden as part of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts’ annual Arts in Bloom event. Listening to her describe her methods of intensive vegetable gardening made me fall in love with the idea of a beautiful, edible French garden….
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A Gardener’s Reading, 13 of 30 By Philip Harnden (Willow Creek Press, 2003) At first glance, Philip Harnden’s treatise on frost seems to be a children’s book. It’s the size and heft of many picture books, its cover is colorful, and inside pictures dominate nearly every page. But this is no bedtime story — especially for those of us who…
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