We Made a Garden

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The Hogarth Press where I’m working, is in the heart of the literary world, with authors coming in all the time. Eventually, a bit sweaty, a bit breathless, not very Thor-like, I’d made a hole big enough to peek through.

There were so many specific references to plants I wasn’t familiar with (especially native English plants and any referred to by their Latin names. Her prose is practical rather than lyrical, and you probably should enjoy gardening to enjoy this book. It’s one of a (not very) regular series of posts about gardens and houses we’ve owned over the years. Barnsley, with its lively pink flowers gave us several gorgeous years of flowers from spring through November, but finally gave up.One day, sink sorted, kitchen painted, Jim was weeding along the side of the house and noticed angled bricks at ground level, similar to those above all the windows. Well, it wasn't much help as a source of practical inspiration, to be honest, but I enjoyed basking in the warmth of her love for all things green, anyway, and that was a kind of inspiration to take more care of the poor neglected patch of muck. What struck me is the amount of labor they put into the garden themselves, both because labor was scarce in WWII England, and because they truly wanted to do the work. No missing or damaged pages, no creases or tears, no underlining or highlighting of text, and no writing in the margins.

The Rayburn heated the kitchen and most of the downstairs, gave us scalding hot water, cooked most of our food and warmed our buns. This is a charming little book by Margery Fish, offering anecdotal history of the choosing and planting of a home garden in England.Probably the least popular review on my blog, which still draws ire to this day, is Elizabeth West’s Hovel in the Hills, which I disliked because she had no sense of humour and really just wanted to record how wonderful she was. After mulling over which long-distance path to walk for my 2017 hiking holiday, I decided to revisit my first love, The Ridgeway.