Have you ever been out with a friend, and another person joins you, who is a good friend of your friend, but you don’t know them? And the two of them start talking about people you don’t know, and even though the conversation is mildly interesting (this one had a baby, that one has a new job), after a while you feel bored and a little left out.
I’m sorry to say that’s how I felt reading Beautiful at All Seasons by Elizabeth Lawrence, the April/May selection of the Garden Bloggers Book Club. It kind of surprised me, as I believe I’d already read all her other books, including Two Gardeners (her correspondence with Katharine White), and No One Gardens Alone (her biography)–and enjoyed them all.
I particularly enjoyed The Little Bulbs: A Tale of Two Gardens, which compared the bulbs blooming in her garden with those of Mr. Krippendorf, her northern gardening friend. Carl Krippendorf planted thousands of daffodils at Lob Woods, and it was very interesting to read about the differences in the two gardens.
And I found Gardening for Love: The Market Bulletins fascinating. As best I can tell, market bulletins were a kind of newspaper farmers subscribed to. Many farmers’ wives sold plants in the ad section, and Lawrence not only purchased plants from them, but corresponded with many. These women were often dirt poor, living isolated lives way out in the sticks, but loved plants and went through great trouble to preserve their passalongs. This book is as much social history as horticultural adventure.
Beautiful at All Seasons just didn’t hold my attention the way so many of her other books did. I hope that doesn’t stop you from reading it, because I’m sure any Southerner would get a lot out of it, or anyone who hadn’t yet read much of Lawrence’s writing.
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
I know what you mean about listening to a conversation between two people who know each other, and you know one of them, BUT for me, as soon as the conversation turns to gardening, I’m in!
I’ve enjoyed reading this book not cover to cover, but topic by topic, spending time on the columns that interested me, breezing by the one’s that didn’t. I find passages throughout that get me thinking about my own garden.
I think I have all of her books except for one, but I’m still working on reading them all.
Thanks for joining in for the book club again!
Carol, May Dreams Gardens
You’re smack-on about this book (or at least you and I exactly agree). I got the feeling with Beautiful At All Seasons that she was just sticking all of these people into her book; they had no flesh and blood. Perhaps that was because they were just people who wrote her a few letters rather than those she actually knew? At any rate, this was a book I could easily skip, whereas The Little Bulbs, I read every winter.
Don
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3 responses so far ↓
1
Carol, May Dreams Gardens
// May 31, 2008 at 9:02 pm
I know what you mean about listening to a conversation between two people who know each other, and you know one of them, BUT for me, as soon as the conversation turns to gardening, I’m in!
I’ve enjoyed reading this book not cover to cover, but topic by topic, spending time on the columns that interested me, breezing by the one’s that didn’t. I find passages throughout that get me thinking about my own garden.
I think I have all of her books except for one, but I’m still working on reading them all.
Thanks for joining in for the book club again!
Carol, May Dreams Gardens
2
Don
// Jun 1, 2008 at 11:29 am
You’re smack-on about this book (or at least you and I exactly agree). I got the feeling with Beautiful At All Seasons that she was just sticking all of these people into her book; they had no flesh and blood. Perhaps that was because they were just people who wrote her a few letters rather than those she actually knew? At any rate, this was a book I could easily skip, whereas The Little Bulbs, I read every winter.
Don
3
Oldroses
// Jun 2, 2008 at 12:53 am
Phew! I thought I was the only one who didn’t care for this book. I couldn’t even finish it.
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