My Summer in a Garden

I didn't know until I actually had this book in my hands that it was written in the nineteenth century. Those are my favorite reads. I love getting a firsthand account of life in the past. As a flower gardener, I'm always interested in what flowers gardeners grew in the past. Although Charles Dudley Warner writes about his veggie garden, it turns out we have a lot in common. I was delighted to read about the toad in his garden. Oh, how I wish I had one in my garden eating pests! We disagree about birds. Perhaps because he was a veggie gardener and I'm a flower gardener. He considered birds pests because they ate his produce. I like them because they consume pests. He had to deal with some very different "pests" than most gardeners today. At least the ones who garden in my area. We don't have to worry about cows or chickens wandering into our gardens or boys stealing our produce. The biggest difference between then and now was a visit from the President. Try to envision what it would be like to have the President visit your garden. The entourage. The Secret Service. The paparazzi. When the President visited Charles Dudley Warner's garden, he came alone. He toured the garden, enjoyed some liquid refreshment and jokingly offered the job of Head Gardener at the White House to his host. It's anecdotes like that that draw me to books written long ago. I can understand why people say that they hate reading about history. Who wants an endless recitation of dates and wars and empires? It's so much more interesting to read about the every day lives (and gardens) of every day people (and gardeners).

what an expressive author and the book contains the most eloquent and heartfelt recollection of a dearly departed constant companion feline

MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN is a slim volume in a series of neglected gardening classics being reprinted by Modern Library, however, to suggest the subject of the book is limited to gardening is to do it a great disservice. In the guise of a week-by-week account of one summer in his garden Charles Dudley Warner waxes philosophical on religion, society, animals, schoolboys, hunters and neighbors as well as plants. Its style will feel familiar to readers of the later literary garden-musings of E.B. White and Elizabeth Von Arnim. Although Warner died in 1900 his language is remarkably fresh and the complaints and joys of gardening familiar. The side comments on women's suffrage only remind one with surprise that in spite of the similarities he was living in a very different time. I found the book when tracking down the following Warner quote, "Regrets are idle; yet history is one long regret. Everything might have turned out so differently!" and in reading the book discovered other gems such as, "Nothing shows one who his friends are, like prosperity and ripe fruit. I had a good friend in the country, whom I almost never visited except in cherry-time. By your fruits you shall know them." It is the gentle humor and subtle wisdom of his observations that elevate Warner's book above the ordinary. Being, at present, a city dweller transplanted from childhood gardens, I found reading the book a great comfort.

I was intrigued by the title and sold by the exerpt. Charles Dudley Warner is fun. But skip the opening 30 pages or so. It's not that the other gentlemen don't write well, but they're not exactly fun. Besides, I didn't buy it to read a discussion of his more boring, 'professional' work in all those pages numbered with tiny Roman numerals. So go directly to Warner's first essay (which is the exerpt) on page 11.

Nicely written and witty book about the pleasures of gardening and its relationship to other aspects of life.