HARROWED: Life Lessons from the Garden

by Heather King

This is the story of the my first, and perhaps my last. I started it at the age of 64. I’m 68 now.The garden brings me satisfaction, beauty, astonishment, joy. The garden also requires an inordinate amount of worry and work. When I started out, I thought simply to put my creative energy into arranging a bunch of plants. I didn’t know the garden would overtake my life. I didn’t know the garden would help teach me how to order my day, pray, let go, love my neighbor, die.

127 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 1, 2020

Reviews

[Melanie Rigney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heather King never disappoints. This book was different from some of her others I've loved, such as Stripped and Ravished. While there's plenty about Heather interior life, this was more about the exterior, about the doing--sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing--in the physical and metaphysical gardens. At first, it made me long to have my own vegetable, floral, and landscaped gardens again... by the end, I understood there are plenty of gardening opportunities in my life that don't involve physical digging. Highly recommend.

[Jillein · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a rambling, random, interesting account of the author’s building a garden in the junky yard of her apartment, which is 1/6 of a big old craftsman style home in a not upscale section on LA. And it’s a lot more. Heather King is so honest and self disclosing that I can’t help loving her writing, marveling at her strength and her bravery and her brokenness. And that she has found her source and meaning in being a Catholic. Like me. I also lived her book Shirt if Flame.