Radical Reading

One of my favorite 'genre' to read is 'a year in the life of...' type books.  Normally these are nonfiction and entertaining.  Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is one that comes to mind immediately as a book which falls in that category.  

Last week I was picking out some books at the library (have a fantastic one I'm reading on Thomas Jefferson's garden at Monticello), and I came across Radical Prunings by Bonnie Thomas Abbott.  While it is not nonfiction, it does cover two years in the garden and I picked it up to give it a read.

Funny and smart is this read.  Set up as the gardening column of Mertensia Corydalis, we get to follow the seasons of gardening advice, as well as the happenings of her brother/sister gardener/secretary team.  Bits are thrown in about her celebrity gardener and ex-husband Norton and lots about her distain for people with lawns.  Since one of my pet peeves are home owner associations who feel a fertilized and sprayed lawn, each one matching the next door neighbors, is preferable to gardens and especially veggies in the front of the house, Mertensia's anti-lawn position was a joy.

While I am not a master gardener, the advice she gives in her column is sound gardening (and made me want to force bulbs indoors), so some interested in gardening wouldn't be mislead.   The trials of the Vong family, her brother Artur and her own gardening trials round out the columns to make this a great and quick read.

By the way...

1.    Mertensia

2. Mertensia is a genus of about 40 species of perennial herbaceous plants with bell-shaped blue flowers opening from pink-tinged buds. This is one of several plants commonly called bluebell.

   
   

   1. Corydalis

      
      

      Corydalis is a genus of about 470 species of annual and perennial herbaceous plants in the Papaveraceae family, native to the temperate Northern Hemisphere and the high mountains of tropical eastern Africa.