November Muse Day 2009

The Lawn Bed November 1

        “Most people, early in November, take last looks at their gardens, and are then prepared to ignore them until the spring.  I am quite sure that a garden doesn’t like to be ignored like this.  It doesn’t like to be covered in dust sheets, as though it were an old room which you had shut up during the winter.  Especially since a garden knows how gay and delightful it can be, even in the very frozen heart of the winter, if you only give it a chance.”

                                                     Beverley Nichols

     I have been reading Rhapsody in Green,  an anthology of Beverely Nichols’ delightful writing about his life in the garden. Plums have been plucked from his various books including Down the Garden Path, Merry Hall, Laughter on the Stairs, Sunlight on the Lawn, and Garden Open Today. If you are equally as fond of cats as gardens he has also written about his beloved cats in Beverley Nichols’ Cats’ A.B.C. All of these have been reprinted by Timber Press and are available to all of us who mourn the fact that we were not born British with a country house in the 30′s and 40′s where we gardenened and wrote and entertained with great wit and style.

Nichols’ opinions could be sharp and brusque, but like all gardeners, he has a great appreciation of the natural world, acknowledges the pains that we gardeners are heir to, digging and weeding and picking and arranging.   I came across his delightful book Garden Open Today first, and that became the inspiration for our Annual Rose Viewing when we open the garden to our friends – and anyone wandering in the Heathan hills on the last Sunday of June.

     Even in November it is easy to attend to our garden because we look out at our Lawn Beds from our table where we have our meals and our tea times. I look down on it from my bedroom window when I first wake in the morning, and take a last moonlit glance when I draw the curtains in the evening.

     I will close with a final quote. “It is only to the gardener that Time is a friend, giving each year more than he steals.” A fine sentiment as the year begins to draw to a close.

Now visit Carolyn gail, who began Muse Day, over at Sweet Home and Garden Chicago where she is celebrating a very special Muse Day.

You might be interested in these other posts:

1. Muse Day May 2009 Bounded by strand above strand of song – the robin’s acre This haiku by a...
2. Muse Day November Spring and FallBy Gerard Manley Hopkins to a young child Margaret are you grievingOver Goldengrove...
3. Monday’s Muse “Now, thank God, everything is finished; perhaps there are still things to be done; there...

5 Comments

• 

  By Rose, November 2, 2009 @ 7:50 am

  Pat, your lawn bed looks beautiful and all set for winter! How lucky you are that you can see it from so many angles during the day. I like the last sentiment of Nichols about Time giving more each year to the gardener. I’m hoping he gives us a little more time for gardening in November!
• 

  By commonweeder, November 2, 2009 @ 8:08 am

  Rose, I wouldn’t mind more time either.
  Pat
• 

  By Nan, November 6, 2009 @ 2:39 pm

  That was just wonderful. I’ve read a couple of his books, and what you said is so perfect – ‘all of us who mourn…’
• 

  By Frances, November 11, 2009 @ 7:57 am

  Hi Pat, thanks for exposing Mr. Nichols to more people. I adore his writing, and yours! I echo Nan’s sentiments on your *all of us who mourn*. Ah, the dreams I have had, transported by his books. Merry Hall is head and shoulders above the rest, IMHO.
  Frances
• 

  By admin, November 11, 2009 @ 8:06 am

  Frances, Would that we could all have a Mr. Nichols to stroll through our gardens with us. He’d even lighten up the disasters.
  Pat

Other Links to this Post

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment