I like to share good books when I come across ones that seem particularly special to me, and I've suddenly got three books that meet my gut-level "need to be blogged about" criteria. Two are gardening books and one is literally about life and death matters, but in a very gentle, non-threatening way.
Given that this is a blog that focuses on gardening, I'll start with the gardening books.
The first bok is Our Life in Gardens, by Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd. Part garden memoir, part "how-to" guide, part philosophy of life and gardening, part plant guide - with touches of poetical descriptions and caustic comments - this book was first recommended to me by a dear friend from Mobile, a woman whose life is intertwined with gardening and with the gardening community of that city. In selecting a quote from the book that encapsulates why I enjoyed it so much, I think it's perhaps appropriate to go with one that echoes the blog entry I just wrote on watching the changing of the seasons last night....
"We have come to feel that an ordered movement through days and months and years is essential to happiness, or to our happiness at least.... Of all the many joyful obligations of our existence, the garden here has been the most sustaining just in part because it is the most rhythmic, through winter, spring, summer, and fall. It actually has taught us to love every day of our life. One cannot ask more of love for a garden than that." (p.310)
The second book, also about gardening, is very different. Home Outside: Creating the Landscape You Love, by Julie Moir Messervy, is one of the best "how to" guides for designing your home landscape that I think I've ever read. Rich in photos and small details that get my creative juices flowing, it's also excellent in making the big steps and design process overall seem accessible and inviting. The top of my copy is now bristling with post-it note flags marking ideas and photos that I want to specifically try in my own yard, while the text has numerous underlined sections of points that I think were particularly important or that gave me "aha!" moments as I read.
To give you just a little flavor of Home Outside, here are a few mental peeks into the book (filtered, of course, through my psyche, such as it is!):
* a concrete lion's face, hung on an exterior house wall and surrounded by a "mane" of vines, above an inviting table for two, half hidden by shrubs....
* 6 different possibilities, incorporating everything from curves to formal gardens, sketched out for one simple suburban house and its basic, rectangular lot....
* a garden, designed by a pair of gardening grandparents, both for their own everyday enjoyment and as a place for their visiting grandchildren to play, with special touches like a rose tunnel, a rusting dragon, and commemorative concrete stepping stones guaranteed to get the kids outside and to give them rich memories that will last a lifetime....
* different patio textures, including a circular terrace whose stones are set in ever-expanding circles that seem to echo radiating waves in a pond....
* discussions of the yin and yang of energy in a landscape....
I could go on for...the length of an entire book, actually, but hopefully this gives you a taste and encourages you to at least leaf through Home Outside at your local library or bookstore.
The last book that I want to talk about here is a total change of pace...and perhaps it should be the subject of a separate blog entry. In fact, I know it should. So I'll wrap this post up and begin a new one. Meanwhile, be sure to check out these 2 books! They're almost sure to enrich your gardening experience.
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