I first read My Summer in a Garden by Charles Dudley Warner, the current selection of the Garden Bloggers’ Book Club, a few years ago.
I do agree with some earlier reviews that it takes a few pages to get used to the rhythm of the book and the “nineteenth century” English, along with the differences in how work (manual labor) and women were viewed in 1870. As I re-read sections of the book this summer, I soon recognized several often quoted passages, familiar to me now, and perhaps more interesting to me now because so many of them are related not just to gardening, but to hoes and hoeing.
From his chapter on the tenth week:
“In half an hour I can hoe myself right away from this world as we commonly see it, into a large place where there are no obstacles. What an occupation it is for thought! The mind broods like a hen on eggs. The trouble is, that you are not thinking about anything, but are really vegetating like the plants around you. I begin to know what the joy of the grape-vine is in running up the trellis, which is similar to that of the squirrel in running up a tree. We all have something in our nature that requires contact with the earth. In the solitude of garden-labor, one gets into a sort of communion with vegetable life, which makes the old mythology possible. For instance, I can believe that the dryads are plenty this summer: my garden is like an ash-heap. Almost all the moisture it has had in weeks has been the sweat of honesty industry.”
Shown by itself, I think there are a few gardeners who would be surprised to find out that this paragraph was written nearly 135 years ago. It shows why Warner’s book is not bound by the time period it was written in and is worth reading again.
Who among us, even without a hoe in hand, has not gotten lost in their garden, lost in thoughts of all types, not especially related to the garden itself, but to life in general? I have solved many problems and made many decisions in the garden with no particular effort to force myself to do so. You can lose both thought and time in a garden!
And at times it does seem possible that “the old mythology” is possible in the garden. For Warner that life was in the form of dryads (tree nymphs), and for me in the playful idea of garden fairies communing at night with the bunnies, planning how to trick me in my own garden.
Some might read the following paragraph and point it out to me especially.
“I need not add, that the care of a garden with this hoe becomes the merest pastime. I would not be without one for a single night. The only danger is, that you may rather make an idol of the hoe, and somewhat neglect your garden explaining it, and fooling with it.”
Really, it’s not necessary to discuss what it means to “make an idol of the hoe”. I think I have control over my hoe collection, and have it all in proper perspective. Really, I do.
Join the book club!
If you would like to join us for the Garden Bloggers’ Book Club, post your own review on your blog of the book selection, My Summer in a Garden by Charles Dudley Warner, which is also available on Google Books, and send me a comment or email so I can include you in the book club post on July 31st. Or if you haven’t read the book, write up something about your own summer in your own garden, and I’ll include that. All are welcome!
Hi Carol,
I read the book for the first time but right away I realized that the author was a true gardener. A man of wealth and privilege he enjoyed the simple pleasures of life in a garden.
If he hadn’t mentioned about women’s suffrage, I could never have guessed when he wrote the book. He was amazing.
I’ve posted MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.
Carol, I’m very pleased with your updated photo. Nice quilt! I think books should be shown in their natural habitat (on beds).
I have to say that a lot of what Charles Dudley Warner wrote reminded me of you. The hoes, the vegetables, the pure dedication to your garden. Not so sure about the cow wandering around, at least you’ve never mentioned one.
I do love the quotes you picked, especially the line “the mind broods like a hen on eggs”. But since I’m usually sitting down just looking at the garden, I really identify with “vegetating like the plants around you”!
I have our next selection on request from InterLibrary Loan.
Carolyn Gail… Your story of your summer in a garden is quite touching. Thanks for posting it.
Lost Roses… My mom made me my quilt, and did you see how nicely made my bed is? Thanks for the kind words, and you are right now cows are wandering around my garden, though I did see that darn rabbit out there again.
Carol at May Dreams Gardens
No book for me, either, just an account of my summer in my garden.
Carol, that’s funny. My mother-in-law made the quilt the book is on in my picture. I guess I should have shown it off better. It’s one of my favorite possessions (which is saying a lot in my house)!
Carol, I enjoyed this book club selection a lot and have a post up on Blithewold’s blog. Thank you again for being such a terrific hostess!
Hi Carol: I didn’t read the book, though I have others in that series…so I just wrote a post about my own ‘summer in a garden’ on my blog, which you can find at http://tinyurl.com/ywvkf3. (I don’t know how to write code in comments without help from blogger, so I made a tiny url instead.
Love your story–even though (GASP!) I’m not much on hoeing, myself.
Hi Carol,
I did read the book and made a rather goofy post about it.
Annie at the Transplantable Rose
Carol, I finished the book last night, and just now got my post written. It was a fun little book.