Winter Reading, Courtesy Google
by Kathy Purdy on September 7, 2006
Carol of May Dreams Gardens made a wonderful discovery. Google has made several old gardening books in the public domain available for download. This sounds like a great project for the winter, once the seed and plant catalogs have been thoroughly marked up. The quotes she pulled from various books certainly make them sound enticing.
Kathy Purdy discovered the joys of writing in fourth grade, when she started corresponding with a former classmate. She's been writing letters ever since, first on looseleaf, then electronically, and now as weblog entries. That makes you, the blog reader, her pen pal. Her first independent (though frustrating) attempts at gardening were made in high school, though the gardening bug didn't bite hard until her mid-thirties, when she found herself mistress of a rural home on 15 acres. •
USDA Hardiness Zone:4 • AHS Heat Zone: 3 • Location: rural;
Southern Tier of NY • Geographic type: foothills of Appalachian
Mountains • Soil Type: acid clay • Experience level:
intermediate
• Particular interests: colchicums, narcissus, cottage gardening, NY
native plants, gardening with/for children
Gardening is the most profound and complex of the arts, operating not just inessentially or marginally through time, but deliberately and consciously. What makes a garden great is the tension between the dimensions, between what is structurally permanent and what is temporarily, immediately, imposed upon that structure.
Brian Bixley, Essays on Gardening in a Cold Climate
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m a “leave it inner” also. Even a weed can be pretty in the garden . . . sometimes.
Thanks for the blog reference! I’m trying not to go back to Google books until winter when I have more time, but I will be going back to read more.
Thanks for mentioning this. I`m definately going to go and have a look
tea
xo