“A garden, no matter how good it is, must never completely satisfy.”
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
In the Garden is a collection of essays on, well, gardening. I had already read another collection in the same series ‘At the Pond’ about nature swimming, which I really enjoyed, and was very much looking forward to this book as well. It did not disappoint.
Not all essays were completely working for me, but that’s a matter of taste as they were all well-written and had something interesting to say. But in the second half there were some pieces that I absolutely loved.
Like Five Tongues by Daisy Lafarge, in which she tries to identify a plant from her garden that nobody seems to recognize, tracing its identity to its etymological, biological, and historical roots, all the way down to the bacteria that solely exists in the aphids she finds on this plant, and the fear of interdependency that triggers.
Or A Ghost Story by Zing Tsjeng, about her chronically depressed mother’s love for gardening, and the relentless almost embarrassing desire for our emotions to be made physical, to be controllable, by trying to save a failing plant while her mother is in hospital.
And Elizabeth-Jane Burnett’s How to Weed: A Writer’s Guide about the heartbreak of having to pull out plants that are termed weeds but have their own undervalued virtues, and the burnout of not living true to yourself.
These are all essays that go deeper than they seem to on the surface, their roots digging down into the rich soil, bringing back up nutritious wisdom for us to consume.
~
~ Follow Me ~
~~~~
Oliver Marks has just been released from prison, and is finally ready to tell Detective Colborne what really happened when his classmate was killed ten years ago. As young actors at an elite conservatory, Oliver and his classmates played the same roles – villain, hero, temptress – over and over again, both off stage and onstage. But when the casting changes, good-natured rivalry turns ugly, and the plays spill dangerously over into real life.
So a disclaimer: I have a 
So a disclaimer: 
Teddy is worried about his granddaughter. Lottie rushes through life working, ticking off to-do lists, canceling plans with friends and snapping at her boyfriend. His late wife, Lily, would have known what to do, but it’s up to Teddy to talk some sense into Lottie. Together with his closest friends, The Gin O’Clock Club, he devices a plan to remind Lottie there’s more to life than being tired and overworked.
The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction – but assassins are creeping closer to her door. Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic. Across the sea, Tané has trained to be a dragonrider since she was a child, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel. Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.
So a disclaimer: 
The Reading Hobbit 