Just a quick note before I run outside and fire up the ol' rototiller (we've got two nice days in a row so I'm planning to work some peat moss and fertilizer down into the soil), but I may have found a book for you to enjoy while waiting for the official start of the 2018 growing season. Katherine Sergeant White was the fiction editor of The New Yorker for years and the wife of author E.B. White. She was quite the gardener at their home in Maine, and wrote 14 gardening essays over the years for The New Yorker. After her death in 1977, her husband collected the essays into this book. They are simply wonderful. From the joy of digging through seed catalogs to the peace of a properly tended garden, Katherine White touches the heart, mind and dirty fingertips of the obsessed amateur. She's been in all the same places as us, from success to failure to oh, my God, what is that growing among the azaleas, so she seems quite the kindred soul. Just one who can write fluidly and beautifully about nearly everything. The book is $17.95 from NYRB Classics. I'm sure you can find it for less on Amazon, but finding it through a local bookseller is always a pleasure and helps the local economy. Also, I suggest a real live paper book, so you can read it just before bedtime and fill your head with rutabaga dreams. NEXT WEEK: Wherein we discuss how putting Cats, Golf and Nazis on the cover will in fact sell just about anything. (In this case, humorous essays.)
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