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The Way of a Gardener: A Life's Journey
Accomplished novelist, satirist, and garden writer Des Kennedy describes his life journey from a childhood of strict Irish Catholicism in England to a charmed existence amid the gardens of his Gulf Island home in British Columbia. From his First Holy Communion to his days as a young seminarian, through the Beat poetry scene in New York and the social upheavals of the 1960s, this monk-turned-pilgrim pursues a quest for meaning and purpose. After leaving monastic life and moving west, Kennedy takes up a new vocation in what has been called the Church of the Earth. On a rural acreage, he and his partner build their home from recycled and hand-hewn materials and create gardens that provide food as well as a symbiosis with the Earth that is as profoundly spiritual as past religious rituals. Spiced with irreverence and an eye for the absurd, The Way of a Gardener ranges over environmental activism, aboriginal rights, writing for a living, amateur wood butchery, the protocols of small community living, and the devilish obscenity of a billy goat at stud.
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 30, 2010
I could not put this book down. It made me want to run out and buy some land, build my own cabin, plant some seeds, hug a tree, and become an environmental activist and protest loudly.
August 9, 2019
This is his memoir which I read 6 years ago and just now again. I'm glad I forgot that I'd read it. Here is my original review which I still agree with.
I like the way he writes. He can be LOL funny both in his writing and also in his public speaking (I had the pleasure of seeing him LIVE at the Langley Garden Club); but in this book about how he came to become a gardener on Denman Island, he was serious.
I enjoyed reading about his parents' values which mirrored my upbringing: "Like others of their generation, they were reducing, reusing and recycling decades before the trilogy became trendy."
About his father's love of gardening: "Only in hindsight did I come to fully appreciate the invaluable inheritance I'd received from my father: the gift of growing. Both he and my mum practiced, and passed on, an appreciation of the wisdom of 'growing your own' and 'doing better with less.'"
His description of harvesting is wonderful: "gathering of theses little leaves is fundamental to their healthfulness, for it gets us out onto the ground, in touch with the warming earth and the surge of its life forces."
About the garden, I found myself agreeing with him: "Unlike other works of art, the garden is a perpetually unfinished business, which both increases its allure and bedevils its curator. There is always something to be done in it, some imperfection to be addressed, a rearrangement of elements required. The ideal of contemplative repose within this place of tranquility is repeatedly besieged by the perceived demands of its transience. Plus a host of mighty strictures work against unproductive pensiveness, just as they do against lying abed. ... Thus the great challenge of the gardening life: to be able every once in a while to set aside all practical considerations and simply allow sensations of delight and wonderment to flood into us for as long as they will."
And here he describes what I myself enjoy most about gardening: "Warmed by voluptuous sunlight, gently prompted by the sights, fragrances, textures, and sounds of luxuriant vegetation, I wander the garden, entirely given over to sweet abstraction."
He sprinkles metaphors about fire throughout the book but I especially enjoy the description of the annual bonfire: "I'll stare into the mound of incandescent embers. I'm gazing in the glowing coals of childhood, into the flames of Hell and Purgatory, those imaginary monsters that devoured my youth. These same coals have smoldered since the times of ancient bane fires, the fires of woe. Or medieval bone fires on which human bones were burned in order to repel dragons. Or further back in our race's long relationship with fire to the Celtic fire festival of Samhain and the Nordic nod-fyr, and the festival fires of Thor and Woden. We light them to ward off the onset of chilling darkness this time of year, to burn off the diseased and evil, to cleanse, to celebrate, to conjure the sun's return. There are dragons still to be repelled, heretics and witches to be burned. They live inside us, among us, in memory and in desire. They are burned and still return. Their laughter is in the voices of the fire. Their lamentation too. I listen for them, staring into the embers. The sky above is a dome of polished jet in which the distant fires of countless galaxies are burning."
His story about the Jehovah's Witnesses who come to save his soul. "They're infrequent callers at our place, rare as solitary thrushes, (after all he does live on an island!) and I can tolerate their occasional well-intentioned intrusions, so long as they've mastered the art of brevity. Our gardens provide them with an apparently irresistible segue into the Garden of Eden, and from that sure starting point they endeavor to carry me off on largely incoherent rambles through the thickets of Holy Writ." As he spent many years studying to become a monk, I'd love to be a fly on that wall.
I like books that point me in new directions and now I have to find out more about Thomas Berry and the Earth Community http://www.earth-community.org/.
Czech reference: quote from Vaclav Havel, addressing the U.S. Congress in 1990 "The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness, and human responsibility."
I like the way he writes. He can be LOL funny both in his writing and also in his public speaking (I had the pleasure of seeing him LIVE at the Langley Garden Club); but in this book about how he came to become a gardener on Denman Island, he was serious.
I enjoyed reading about his parents' values which mirrored my upbringing: "Like others of their generation, they were reducing, reusing and recycling decades before the trilogy became trendy."
About his father's love of gardening: "Only in hindsight did I come to fully appreciate the invaluable inheritance I'd received from my father: the gift of growing. Both he and my mum practiced, and passed on, an appreciation of the wisdom of 'growing your own' and 'doing better with less.'"
His description of harvesting is wonderful: "gathering of theses little leaves is fundamental to their healthfulness, for it gets us out onto the ground, in touch with the warming earth and the surge of its life forces."
About the garden, I found myself agreeing with him: "Unlike other works of art, the garden is a perpetually unfinished business, which both increases its allure and bedevils its curator. There is always something to be done in it, some imperfection to be addressed, a rearrangement of elements required. The ideal of contemplative repose within this place of tranquility is repeatedly besieged by the perceived demands of its transience. Plus a host of mighty strictures work against unproductive pensiveness, just as they do against lying abed. ... Thus the great challenge of the gardening life: to be able every once in a while to set aside all practical considerations and simply allow sensations of delight and wonderment to flood into us for as long as they will."
And here he describes what I myself enjoy most about gardening: "Warmed by voluptuous sunlight, gently prompted by the sights, fragrances, textures, and sounds of luxuriant vegetation, I wander the garden, entirely given over to sweet abstraction."
He sprinkles metaphors about fire throughout the book but I especially enjoy the description of the annual bonfire: "I'll stare into the mound of incandescent embers. I'm gazing in the glowing coals of childhood, into the flames of Hell and Purgatory, those imaginary monsters that devoured my youth. These same coals have smoldered since the times of ancient bane fires, the fires of woe. Or medieval bone fires on which human bones were burned in order to repel dragons. Or further back in our race's long relationship with fire to the Celtic fire festival of Samhain and the Nordic nod-fyr, and the festival fires of Thor and Woden. We light them to ward off the onset of chilling darkness this time of year, to burn off the diseased and evil, to cleanse, to celebrate, to conjure the sun's return. There are dragons still to be repelled, heretics and witches to be burned. They live inside us, among us, in memory and in desire. They are burned and still return. Their laughter is in the voices of the fire. Their lamentation too. I listen for them, staring into the embers. The sky above is a dome of polished jet in which the distant fires of countless galaxies are burning."
His story about the Jehovah's Witnesses who come to save his soul. "They're infrequent callers at our place, rare as solitary thrushes, (after all he does live on an island!) and I can tolerate their occasional well-intentioned intrusions, so long as they've mastered the art of brevity. Our gardens provide them with an apparently irresistible segue into the Garden of Eden, and from that sure starting point they endeavor to carry me off on largely incoherent rambles through the thickets of Holy Writ." As he spent many years studying to become a monk, I'd love to be a fly on that wall.
I like books that point me in new directions and now I have to find out more about Thomas Berry and the Earth Community http://www.earth-community.org/.
Czech reference: quote from Vaclav Havel, addressing the U.S. Congress in 1990 "The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness, and human responsibility."
July 28, 2010
In this book Des Kennedy chronicles his life from his birth place in England through his childhood in eastern Canada, his years of preparation for the priesthood, his rejection of this calling and embracing of counter-lifestyle during the sixties, and his eventual and seemingly inevitable metamorphosis into a gardener with his own tv show, newspaper and magazine columns and books. Because we are the same age, I found it interesting to follow his journey through the decades. I also have discovered the joys of gardening. My only quibble is that I sense a bit of smugness, a belief on his part that he holds the moral highground when it comes to life choices. But this may not be the case. It's quite possible I have misunderstood him. In any case, I enjoyed the book and am happy to recommend it to others.
January 29, 2012
This was probably not the best first book to read by this author. He apparently has several other true gardening books--which is what I was wanting from this book. Instead it was a memoir, only glancingly about gardening in the last few chapters. So I skipped over much of the middle portion because I just had no buy-in as to wanting to know about his life. Still, he's an excellent writer, a literary writer, deeply well-read and with well-constructed thoughts and sentences. It may be a good book to return to later in life. Although this book didn't ring my bell, it does interest me in looking to a few of his others.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews