Tangled Branches: Cultivated
happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
My Summer in a Garden
This summer the Garden Bloggers' Book Club has been taking it easy, reading a short and charming book by Charles Dudley Warner - My Summer in a Garden.
I am inclined to think that the substratum is the same, and that the only choice in this world is what kind of weeds you will have.
That quote sums up the book nicely. Warner good-naturedly chronicled his battles with weeds, marauding animals, and theiving humans - all attempting to thwart his efforts to grow good things to eat. His most vexing enemy was a weed he knew as "pusley". Nowadays we call it purslane, and Warner would be dismayed but not surprised to learn that it's now considered a nutritious crop.
Who can say that other weeds, which we despise, may not be the favorite food of some remote people or tribe? We ought to abate our conceit. It is possible that we destroy in our gardens that which is really of most value in some other place.
Warner gardened in the mid 1800s in the Northeast, but his frustrations and joys are echoed by many of today's garden bloggers. And late summer is a wonderful time to review the frustrations - creatures great and small are intent on consuming the products of our labors. In the present day, I think most of us are happy not to be chasing the neighbor's cow out of the garden, but Warner has nothing at all to say about deer, or Japanese beetles. Different combatants, same war.
The gardener believes that the struggle and toil is worth it. Apparently even in 1870, many things were not regarded as worth doing unless there was a monetary reward. Warner tries to calculate whether his potatoes were profitable, while wishing it wasn't necessary to justify himself in this way.
Shall I compute in figures what daily freshness and health and delight the garden yields, let alone the large crop of anticipation I gathered as soon as the first seeds got above ground? I appeal to any gardening man of sound mind, if that which pays him best in gardening is that which he cannot show in his trial-balance. Yet I yield to public opinion, when I proceed to make such a balance; and I do it with the utmost confidence in figures.
I like old books and clever writing, and this selection for the Garden Bloggers' Book Club seemed custom-designed to please me. I must admit that many of the political references were lost on me, but it didn't diminish my enjoyment of the book. I only wish I had the actual book in my hand instead of reading it on a computer screen. (My alibris.com order didn't arrive.) I'm wondering though, if the reprint editions include all the wonderful old typographical ornaments that the original had. They really set the stage for the author's 1870 style of writing.
Thank you once again Carol, for bringing bloggers together to read and discuss great garden books.
Labels: books
6 Comments:
Entangled, you wrote a great review - and it's pretty funny to see that this book elicited similar sentiments from both of us.
The one good part of reading it on line was that I could google his current references as I went along, but reading it that way did give me a headache!
Annie at the Transplantable Rose
Thanks for participating in the Garden Bloggers' Book Club, again. Great review and write up. I admire you reading it all online. I'm not sure I could do that!
Carol at May Dreams Gardens
Annie: I wish I had thought of looking up the current affairs stuff while I was reading. I just made mental notes of things I didn't understand, meaning to go back to them. That never works. One that did catch my eye was his reference to a Civil War guerilla, Quantrell, bits of whom are buried (allegedly) in the same cemetery in Ohio as some of my ancestors.
Carol: I kept hoping that my copy of the book would arrive, but finally realized that I was going to have to read it on the computer or not at all. Good thing it was a short book :-) I picked up the next selection (A Hoe Lot of Trouble) at a used bookstore yesterday and started reading last night. I will be on time for this one.
Oh, you had illustrations in the online version? My book edition didn't have those! Maybe I wouldn't have thought he was so curmudgeonly if I could have seen those humorous drawings.
I just read that purslane should be steamed with olive oil and that's it's the best source of omega something-or-other. But I'll have to pass on it anyway!
LostRoses: The Google Books edition is a scanned copy of an original (?) edition, or a very old one anyway. I wondered if the reprints looked the same, and now I know. Here's another illustration - this one about his change of heart about Calvin the Cat catching birds.
I don't think I'll be planting any purslane either, and come to think of it, that's one weed I don't have.
Great review entangled. I read the book online and in a hurry as well but intend to try and find an old copy to reread.
The political references were daunting but I did take the time later to look up one of interest.
The Reverdy Johnson was apparently in the news. He was a Senator from Maryland then later a Minister to England in 1868 and 1869 losing his position when Grant took the presidency. Hence the humor. After all that I finally got the joke...
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