Book Report: The Garden Explored

I've just started this new gardening book. I appreciate any gardening book that starts by telling me that at least one part of their garden always looks horrible because they are experimenting and exploring. I don't remember where I read it, but the best advice I've gotten about inviting people over is to make sure things are not too neat because it is intimidating. Having something out of order makes it more likely for people to be okay inviting you to their homes after seeing yours because they know that you are not expecting perfection from them. This advice made sense to me and I have to admit part of that is that I have that feeling when I visit a house that is too clean and well put together as if it was out of a magazine and nobody lives there that if I invite that person over to my house they will judge me. My home is what most people describe as homey. We have a lot of things that most would say don't go together, but that somehow work together. I suspect it is all the art on the walls distracting people from the different colored bookshelves and at times haphazard stacking. The furniture that doesn't always quite match. I also have to admit the friends we have who are really messy, I feel those most comfortable with them staying with us because it takes a lot of the pressure off. I never feel with them that somehow I should try to make myself into a better housekeeper (like that is going to happen when the major way I think a house can stay neat is by getting rid of stuff and keeping possession down to a minimum).

Even better is the advice to not listen to people say "You can't grow that here" unless they can tell you why. The author is really into the science of plants which starts with knowledge of the origins of those plants. One of the examples is "English lavender" which apparently originated in the rocky cliffs of Greece so that to grow it one needs to know to give it the chalky, rocky, poor soil that it originated in. We have that kind of soil here in Austin, too bad I'm allergic to it. (I just have to mention that now that I understand that limestone and chalk are related every time I hear a reference to chalky soil I think of Tiffany Aching who lived on the Chalk and I want to say that I live on the Chalk since I find so much of it digging in the backyard. I never understood that reference before in the young adult books by Terry Pratchett about Tiffany Aching. The best book on tape I've listened to maybe ever is his book Wee Free Men. I couldn't stop laughing. Highly Recommended as well.) The other advice is to know your conditions of your own soil or how to mimic the conditions of the plants native habitat. Who knew that Tomatoes originated in the tropical jungles of South America... No wonder people have to spend so much time caring for them. I haven't tried it yet, but the next planting time go around I'm going to try to grow me some tomatoes.

I suspect the author will eventually get around to talking about adapted plant species, but I still suspect that you can adapt a plant only so far from it's original habitat without genetically modifying it. I'm really excited about what I will learn from this book especially since it will help me garden in a manner that suites me better. I'm an experimenter though I probably won't ever make much of scientist because not only do I hate to measure stuff, but things don't seem to turn out right when I measure (okay mainly food). The few food items I've ever tried to follow the recipe exactly on never came out right or good. The ones I cooked by the seat of my oftentimes were sensational. The "Man" watched me make cookies once and told me that there was no way they would come out right because I didn't bother to measure anything and you just can't bake without measuring. I combined ingredients from several different recipes without measure just intuitively working with the ingredients. Those were some of the best cookies I've ever made, though I have no record of what I did nor can I ever reproduce them in exactly the same way I have great memories of those cookies. They are a moment in time and I love those moments in time, captured memories, precious because they can never be repeated.

I'm already making some unrepeatable memories in our backyard...