The Backyard Parables: Lessons on Gardening, and Life

How brave of her to quit her job and go for it in the gardening and writing world! Helps to inherit the land: May 26, Maggie rated it it was amazing. For folks who have been gardening for a couple decades. Jun 18, Kelly Ehrnman rated it really liked it. Apr 05, Beth Ann rated it liked it. I like how she wove actual gardening maintenance and plant selection information into her personal memoir. Sep 17, Lesa Liberamans rated it really liked it. I very much enjoyed this unique book.

Apr 14, Dianne rated it really liked it.

It reads like a memoir of her gardening experiences through out the seasons. I am enjoying it. I am now anxious to get in the garden but winter does not want to let go. Dec 19, Sherrie rated it it was amazing Shelves: This was a really good book, if your into gardening. The author shares some of her life while working on her garden.

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She gives lots of tips along the way and some really funny stories of garden life. Weeds, animals and insects is another story she shares. Her remedies on how to combat these. Dec 22, Terri Hamilton rated it really liked it Shelves: I've since read both of her previous books, A Way to Garden: I enjoy Margaret's often poetic writing style, including the small italicized asides.

This book did seem somewhat of a mashup of her two previous books--part memoir, and part journal of one year in her garden, organized by seasons. I had read the blog posts of that year, so I already knew many of the stories. The lessons aren't terribly profound; it's no Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. But that would be a lot to ask! The fact it reminded me even just slightly of that might count for something. I've seen criticisms of the informational sidebars. I didn't mind them, although that might not have been the most brilliant idea ever.

There aren't really enough of them to satisfy the person who might have thought they were getting a how-to book.

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Perhaps there ARE enough of them to drive people to the author's blog, which has plenty of how-to. I hope Margaret Roach's next book IS a how-to. In particular I would love to see her tackle organic gardening. She treats it as almost a given in her book, but I think her take on it could really help a lot of gardeners. This book is a pleasant winter read in between the seed catalogs. May 27, Jodie rated it really liked it Shelves: Margaret Roach is a thoughtful, intelligent writer and gardener who brings a smart perspective in this book about her garden, plants, and cooking.

Unlike many Margaret Roach is a thoughtful, intelligent writer and gardener who brings a smart perspective in this book about her garden, plants, and cooking. Unlike many gardening books, this one is not filled with colorful photographs of info-graphics. Instead, you will find real information you can use and digest. I often re-read Margaret Roach's book for inspiration.

Another plus, is that Roach is a modern gardener, which I find helpful after reading my stack of books from the s and essays by Gertrude Jekyll, who Roach must have read and admired. I have also become hooked on her website: Mar 02, Tracy rated it liked it. I had a hard time getting into this book and I'm not sure if it was me or the book.

I guess I was looking for more gardening and less life. I will say that I am looking forward even more to getting into my own garden once the snow melts and the ground thaws after reading this book.

“The Backyard Parables – Lessons on Gardening, and Life” Book Review

I was hoping for an entire book like that and didn't get it here. This i I had a hard time getting into this book and I'm not sure if it was me or the book.

This is a nice one for a gardener to read, especially one who isn't so young anymore. Dec 25, Mark rated it liked it. A decent read about a year in the life of a garden, and the gardener therein. The parable structure was a tad off putting at times, but I got used to it.

Margaret uses way too many metaphors in her writing. She also talks an awful lot about getting old and her presumed fear of dying. I liked getting some personal insight into her life, which we rarely get through her other venues, but I found it a bit of a downer. Overall, an enjoyable read. I really enjoyed this book- especially its focus on gardening, since the last book Ms. Roach wrote was more memoir of her life also enjoyable, but this is more relate-able. It offered advice but not in the stodgy way a textbook would - instead it felt as if I was sitting across the table, sipping tea and sitting with an old friend.

Definitely worth a read. May 23, Joan rated it really liked it. The subtitle says it best: I enjoyed reading these well written essays. The author covers a year in the life of her garden.

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• The Backyard Parables: Lessons on Gardening, and Life by Margaret Roach.
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Inserting numerous I almost said "endless" sidebars of information--which, by the way, aren't really sidebars when they ramble on for pages and pages, is ugly they're all printed on a dingy gray background and senseless they interrupt the flow of the book, and they often have little or nothing to do with the text they interrupt. What in the world happened? Who designed this book??

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It's a sad thing, as this perhaps could have been another beautiful book. How could I not love, at least a little and maybe much, a book whose cover shows a frog leopard? The de-icer, it seems, failed.

The Backyard Parables: Lessons on Gardening, and Life

Into the winter snows went Margaret Roach, equipped primarily with a cellphone flashlight and ready to flop on her belly, unsure of the pond circumferences, sticking her bare hand into electrical stuff to disarm the current, and then whacking away at the ice. A fine story, well-told, but a parable?

In "The Backyard Parables," Margaret Roach describes her works and days in her country home through the four seasons. This usually is a tried-and-true framework for books about gardening as well as for books about Gardening as a Metaphor for Life. Usually, such a book is linear and makes for an easy-to-follow story line, reminding us, perhaps of Thoreau's "Walden. Think matrix where the story is episodic, horizontal, revealed from season to season. Consider, for example, the woodchuck.

The woodchuck does its thing in spring, eating the sprouts of the peas down to the ground. Our heroine, alerted by its whistling and the vanished seedlings, tracks it to an opening likely to be its den, plans to set a trap. Next paragraph is off on an utterly unrelated topic. Many pages onward, in a later season, the rodent reappears in several pages of failed trapping efforts, followed again by another set of thoughts entirely.

And in a third season we have even more on the by now very fat fellow in a riff on neighbors who have trapped successfully and on the impossibility of ridding the woods of woodchucks. Really, why bother, and what are the relative claims of chucks and men? Thus, across seasons, an interesting story that can be read as a parable without too much stretching. Within seasons, however, thought follows thought fractually, like a conversation with some one whose mind leaps from idea to musing to facts to riffs connected in ways many of us can't understand.

Where's the sense in all this sensibility? It is part autobiography, part observations, part fillers of culinary and horticultural sidebars, part continuing stories of country living and familiar characters from earlier books, such as Roach's cat, Jack. Thus "The Backyard Parables" is likely to be zero stars to readers who can't stand this style and five stars to readers who find the idea-bytes provocative, charming, Anne-Tyler-like good reading. The lessons may come more from animal than plant life: There is, to be fair, plenty on plants, such as readiness for survival or thrival among transplants and on the matter of weeds in the compost.

Yes, at times the writing reaches for wit and grasps cute; at times, the six synonyms for one verb seems too transparently "I promised pages"; at times the fractals get overly fractured. Yet if the reader is willing to deal with this, or even is pleasantly challenged by it, the gain is worth the pain. Perhaps to those brought up on texting and blogs, there may be no pain at all, in which case, this may be your joyous read for the winter season.

Dismay at style and format for those brought up more on Vita Sackville-West's gardening books or better still for lessons on gardening and life, Thoreau, think again before you buy. I was very intrigued to hear about the author on a gardening blog, and had to buy the book. She left a high powered career in the city to live in the country and garden. It is a wonderful, insightful book, written loosely in a seasonal form. She also shares her thoughts on seeds, hybrids and heirlooms.

“The Backyard Parables – Lessons on Gardening, and Life” Book Review - GardenBunch

Spring comes along, and she moves to cutting back in the yard — what has outgrown its space — culling and editing the garden plant residents. Advice about deer, under plantings, succession sowing, and cutting back perennials come into the chapter as well. She discusses mulch, storing herbs, and which bulbs really are animal proof. Autumn is my favorite chapter, although it was also the most melancholy one. During this chapter, Margaret tells of a too-early fall storm that comes in quickly, and results in much of her beloved garden being destroyed, or at a minimum, badly maimed.

She is reminded by a gardening friend and helper during clean up of this advice: After the destruction of the storm, she is reminded once more that Mother Nature can be brutal, and that nothing lasts, not you, nor her. Gardeners and their gardens?