Bowers is a botanist--that is, someone who studies plants. She did not consider herself a gardener until recently. Now, however, her passions are compost; the birds, butterflies, and lizards that inhabit her garden; and the food webs they represent. Bowers's essays evoke the fascination of gardens yet accept the contradictions involved in creating a natural world that is, in fact, unnatural, for her vegetables and riotous flowers are unsuited to life in her desert home. Nonetheless, this is a delightful garden journal that all gardeners, especially those in the Southwest, will appreciate. Bowers is also the author of The Mountains Next Door ( LJ 9/1/91).
- Katharine Galloway Garstka, Intergraph Corp., Huntsville, Ala.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Product Description
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."
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