The Backyard Parables: Lessons on Gardening, and Life
As orioles flit, tadpoles leap, and Jack the Demon Cat stalks unsuspecting chipmunks, Roach muses on the nature of nature in a garden she has tended for 25 years. Roach would be the first to admit the garden has, in many ways, tended her, too, and she brings a Zen-like appreciation for the lessons gardens impart to those who are willing to watch, listen, and learn. Informed by the seasons, Roach also gardens with a spiritual respect for earth’s basic elements. Water, in its frozen form, blankets trees in winter, while the land itself bursts forth in reassuring fecundity with spring’s arrival. Summer blazes with fiery heat and color only to have it all drift away on autumn’s chill winds. A pensive gardener, Roach is also passionate in her critique of trends and practices she views as harmful or unproductive, from the politics of seed selling to the pollution of streams. Now aging, along with her beloved garden, Roach, with grace and humor, assesses and accepts the inevitable changes that beset them both. --Carol Haggas