A Full Life in a Small Place and Other Essays from a Desert Garden
178 pages, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2
Paperback
Release Date:01 Dec 1992
ISBN:9780816513574
A Full Life in a Small Place and Other Essays from a Desert Garden
The University of Arizona Press
The frustrations and pleasures of gardening are evident; its implications for life are more subtle, lurking under a leaf or buried in a compost pile. Janice Emily Bowers senses these implications, and communicates them as only a fine writer can. In A Full Life in a Small Place, she shows how backyard gardening opens up a broader appreciation of both life and living. Her observations on organic gardening inspire further meditations on nature and wildlife, and demonstrate how gardens both complicate and enrich our lives. In their entirety, these sixteen essays ask how we shall live, and recognize that "before we can determine how, we need to find out why."
Bowers's essays evoke the wonder and fascination of gardens. . . . a delightful garden journal that all gardeners, especially those in the Southwest, will appreciate.'—Library Journal
'She cogently demystifies some of the organic farmer's seemingly irrational methods. . . . reflective and informed nature writing.'—Kirkus Reviews
'The inspiration to be out in the garden is overwhelming, and the book must be set down to be returned to later. Again and again.'—Seedhead News
'She writes with the same vigor and grace she brings to the ordering of her garden and to her keen observation and recording of the life, both vegetable and animal, that teems within its suburban Tucson borders....Although there are facts amusing, useful or stimulating aplenty in these essays, there's not one that needs to be dusted before tasting. Each one is as fresh as a sun-warmed tomato straight from the vine.'—Arizona Daily Star
'Bowers's 16 essays remind us that paradise can be found in our own back yards and that a lifetime can be spent learning all about it. . . . Enjoyable and thought-provoking.'—Audubon Naturalist News
Janice Emily Bowers is a botanist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Tucson.
