January 20th, 2008 Friends
One of our seven (very full) book cases. No wonder our house seems small!!!
The evolution of my own gardening life can be traced by merely reading the titles on our library shelves. I still have the very first gardening related book I purchased, on houseplants. Little did I know that purchase was the first step towards a career in horticulture. As my interest in plants grew, so too did my library. The book on houseplants was soon followed by an encyclopaedia of gardening, then a book on herbs, then roses, and annuals, and perennials. Before long, bookcases were being built to house all of the wonderfully inspirational friends I insisted on bringing home.
I have best friends, good friends, friends, and some that are mere acquaintances. Some I know well, but not by choice. Rather like a co-worker you must spend forty hours a week with. Even though you do not click, you foster a relationship for the good of the ultimate goal. Most of those books are the technical manuals and text books. (If anyone can stay awake while reading a five hundred page text on soil, then you know they have the passion for gardening.) The best friends are the books I return time and again. Over the years they have become rather dog-eared, but they still continue to delight. The good friends I visit with less often, though they remain an important part of my library. The remaining books, the friends and acquaintances, are like the friends from elementary school you have outgrown. Someone you see once every couple of years, usually by accident. You don’t really have anything in common anymore except that small thread of a shared experience long ago. Some books are more eye candy than anything else. Their words do not do justice to the photographs of plants, gardens or landscapes that their pages contain.
This horticultural library, compiled over thirty years is something of a time capsule. One can trace the trends and fads by title and content, see the evolution of gardening by the technical advice available thirty years ago and today. Often the oldest of the books have the best information. Tried and true methods of long ago, before technology crept into the garden and complicated it. And written proof that Grandmama, with all her strange gardening advice is not quite as senile as we think.
A few years ago, I attempted to catalogue my library. That ambitious endeavour was abandoned when the number of gardening books we have became embarrassing. I have also attempted to sort them into some logical arrangement. How wonderful it would be, I thought, if I needed information on roses for example, to go to one section and have all the books on that subject in one area. That failed too because I am notorious for pulling a book out, then getting too busy to put it back. Until, piles of books on the floor become an obstacle course and, tripping hazard. Only then will I attempt to find a spot, any spot, on the shelves for all the books that have been holding down the rug.
Books have always been an important part of my life thanks to my father. He used to read to me all the time. Seldom would he return from a trip without a book for us to share. When I was a child, I was ill for a long time. During the years it took to recover, I was unable to participate in the most the activities my friends could. Forced to lead a quiet and somewhat solitary life, reading became my hobby, and books my friends. They still are even though the story books have been replaced mostly with gardening books and the odd murder mystery. One thing that has not changed? I still like looking at the pictures!
