Serendipity

I just spent the past week immersed in two lovely books: The Morville Year and The Morville Hours, by Katherine Swift. Regular readers of this blog know that the eleventh book in the Sebastian St. Cyr series, Untitled (yeah, the lack of a title starting to bug me), will see Sebastian and Hero and Simon traveling north to Shropshire (for reasons that will become more clear after you've read #10, Who Buries the Dead). One of the characters in the Shropshire book is a woman who lives in a dower house around which she has created a lovely garden. And in one of those marvelous accidents of fate, I was kicking around the Internet one day when I stumbled upon Swift, who has created a lovely garden around a National Trust dower house in Shropshire, and wrote two books about it. So of course I ordered them.

I was hoping they might prove to be useful research tools; what I didn't expect was to be swept away. These are enchanting books, full of all sorts of marvelous details about plants and birds and butterflies and bees, about the cycle of the seasons and folkways and ancient traditions, about life and history and country folk and one woman's intense love for the making of a garden.

You know a book has really touched you when you realize it has caused a shift in your thinking, a change in your outlook. My own garden has been hideously neglected this past year, with all of my weekends going to getting my mother's house ready to sell (closing this Thursday!!!!!!!!!). Neglect a garden in New Orleans and it will swallow your house. I've been feeling so oppressed and anxious about it that my attitude was destroying my joy in my garden (well, that plus New Orleans' brutal summer heat). Thanks to Swift, I've been able to let go that oppressive sense of, Oh, God, I should have cut back my roses by now! and It's almost time for the leaves to start falling again and I never finished picking up last year's! Yes, my garden's a mess. But I'm slowly bringing it back, and thanks to Swift, I find I can relax and enjoy the process of getting it there far more than I would have otherwise. Her gift to me.

Magical books.