A Breath From Elsewhere by Mirabel Osler

A charming and unique gardening guide explores the way gardening fits into the cycle of life and is filled with a wealth of wisdom and anecdotes that will motivate beginning and expert gardeners alike. Editorial Reviews Amazon.com Review The charm of gardening is that as everything is forever on the move, you can change and alter things as you go along.... Whatever nourishes your impulses should be your launching pad, writes Mirabel Osler, underlining her enthusiasm for vicarious gardening, an approach she encourages both the novice and the experienced gardener to consider when thinking about their own patches, in her new book, A Breath from Elsewhere. Offering her wise, witty, and exceedingly insightful views on gardening, Osler (A Gentle Plea for Chaos) winds her way down the garden path, pausing to address the beginners--those individuals tempted, yet still hesitant--and continuing with folks who have already launched themselves into the unknown region but have not yet found their bearings. The final stop is for those nearing the end of their gardening lives, for widows and widowers, partners and lovers, who may be struggling to keep the garden going but who can't release themselves from it without being overwhelmed by guilt. With such chapter headings as There Are No Right Ways to Make a Garden, and Surfing the Flower Beds, greenhorn gardeners will find comfort as well as inspiration from Osler's candid discussions, while Dead-Heading the Guilt allows seasoned gardeners to let go, move on, and make a garden of their own. After all, by jumping in the deep end rather than treading water, it is possible to do something radical. Osler's argument--to break the golden rules, follow your instincts, and create the garden that you desire--is made ever stronger by her personal approach, pointed humor, and skillful storytelling, effectively drawing the reader further down the path towards the garden as refuge--a place perfectly suited for inspiration or freedom, for discovery or surrender. --Stefanie Hargreaves From Publishers Weekly Can a garden book succeed without glossy photos and nary a mention of composting and plant rotation? It can if it's written in Osler's exquisite prose, extolling the unusual enchantment of a garden rather than miring readers in the intricacies of soil composition and weed control. Cheerfully admitting her lack of scientific expertise, Osler offers essays nevertheless inspire readers to truly experience gardens. Along the way, she takes to task certain garden visitors: dilettante photographers, for their narrow lens views, and smokers, who miss the myriad garden scents. Since gardening can easily overwhelm the unwary, Osler offers tips for standing firm, such as buying plants in a nursery that has none of the soliciting-to-buy and the gimcrack tat of some garden centers where all the flowers have been force-fed to bloom ahead of season. She believes that real gardeners don't make a garden but work with plants and nature to help a garden and its mood evolve. Osler (A Gentle Plea for Chaos) also addresses the neglected topic of coping with garden demands when one's gardening partner dies or becomes ill. Drawing on her own experience, she offers suggestions for handling guilt, grief and moving forward in new ways. This book, both imaginative and practical, will stimulate experienced green-thumbers while inspiring novices. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Publishers Weekly Can a garden book succeed without glossy photos and nary a mention of composting and plant rotation? It can if it's written in Osler's exquisite prose, extolling the unusual enchantment of a garden rather than miring readers in the intricacies of soil composition and weed control. Cheerfully admitting her lack of scientific expertise, Osler offers essays nevertheless inspire readers to truly experience gardens. Along the way, she takes to task certain garden visitors: dilettante photographers, for their narrow lens views, and smokers, who miss the myriad garden scents. Since gardening can easily overwhelm the unwary, Osler offers tips for standing firm, such as buying plants in a nursery that has none of the soliciting-to-buy and the gimcrack tat of some garden centers where all the flowers have been force-fed to bloom ahead of season. She believes that real gardeners don't make a garden but work with plants and nature to help a garden and its mood evolve. Osler (A Gentle Plea for Chaos) also addresses the neglected topic of coping with garden demands when one's gardening partner dies or becomes ill. Drawing on her own experience, she offers suggestions for handling guilt, grief and moving forward in new ways. This book, both imaginative and practical, will stimulate experienced green-thumbers while inspiring novices. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal English garden writer Osler (A Gentle Plea for Chaos, Arcade, 1998) offers contemplations mixed with advice based on practical growing experience. Her forte is the thoughtful expression of the fears and passions gardeners encounter as they tackle the challenge of creating a garden. Inexperienced growers as well as gardeners who have matured along with their gardens will find insights into the personal rewards of growing plants. The book includes thoughts on the smoking visitor in the fragrant garden, the photographer in the garden, and the gardener who is just beginning to grow plants. A pleasant combination of personal observation and sage advice that is perfect for the reader who needs gardening alternatives during the slow-growing winter months; recommended for public libraries.ADale Luchsinger, Milwaukee Area Technical Coll. Lib., WI Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus Reviews There are many rooms and seasons in Osler's (A Gentle Plea for Chaos, 1998) garden: alternatives proliferate in the measure of its days, uncertainties mingle with felicities, there is restoration and ferment, there may even be potential for a decaying piano amid the willows and tall grasses. Osler is a contrarian, but not merely for the sake of being one. Its more that there is too much potential for her to be stultified by the anointed arbiters of garden taste. She says, ``Thank goodness for deviancy . . . and for a sense of fun,'' for that is how a garden becomes a creation of ones own, a sanctuary, an incitement to the senses. There is not so much particular advice in these pages as sound notions for toilers in the soil. ``Novice gardeners should allow themselves from the outset the freedom to be as wayward as they want and to follow their instincts.'' She can speak sensibly, in the same breath, of unity and balance in the garden, and of rusted objects and mirrors that she has deployed in an effort to achieve those qualities. And she delights in how both the expected and the unexpected can be milked for pleasure in the garden: urns and vegetables, trees (``neglect these at your peril'') and walls (``no garden should be without a wall''), water and benches and follies all have something to contribute. ``What I want, she writes, is adventure, innovation, foolishness and discovery,'' and that extends to bereaved gardeners who suddenly find themselves ``left with a legacy that too often loads you down with guilt'': don't tread water, make the garden your own. Osler never met a garden bully she didn't instantly dislike. To watch her thumb her nose at the bullies with such flair, and with such gratifying results, is an inspiration. -- Copyright ®1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.