Wonderful Gardening Book
I'm a gardener of only a few years' experience but I already love reading gardening books. Carol Williams has my vote for most wonderful thinker and writer about gardens and gardening I've read so far. Instead of offering detailed plans and instructions, she encourages her readers to pay attention in our gardens, to the soil, the plants, where the water is and isn't, the animals and birds. To spend time there and experiment -- slowly and gradually -- at learning what the soil needs, what the plants need, what we need and want out of and for our gardens. She recognizes that gardeners in different parts of the country garden differently because of different soils, plants, weathers and climates.
She is a spiritual gardener who loves dirt. (Not that any kind of gardener doesn't love dirt, and digging in it. And maybe every gardener, and everyone who creates, is spiritual.)
She's realistic about time and weather making changes in gardens: sometimes weather damage forces us to start over; sometimes we have a choice to start over because things have become overgrown, or stale, or we just want to change something. The author shows us that gardeners learn a different sense of time working in our gardens through the seasonal cycles year after year. We are part of the work of the seasons and the work of the earth.
Thank you, Carol, for encouraging a beginning gardener to keep digging!
