All My Edens
Question from Barbara:
Just finished “All My Edens” and wanted to thank you for sharing your varied and interesting personal experiences with nature and gardening. Those remarkable, timeless moments along with great gardening tips (ear-marked those pages) and an engaging family history made for reading that I never wanted to end. Having, by choice or by chance, lived in La Mesa, Julian, and La Mesa again, I know how profoundly our Edens can be created, lost and found again, but can never stay the same.
Thanks, too, for posting more biographical details so there’s an update on your story.
I look forward to reading more of your great gardening advice and hope someday to meet you at one of your events.
Answer from Pat:
Thank you so much for your kind email regarding “All My Edens”. It pleases me deeply when I discover that fourteen years after “All My Edens” was published and long after it went out of print, it is still giving pleasure and inspiration to people such as you.
Your thoughtful and well-stated remarks came at a moment that makes them particularly encouraging and appreciated.
I am now in the midst of writing a second memoir covering the years of my marriage to my late husband, Louis, his illness and death, and the experiences and revelations that life has brought me since then. I also am recounting more stories from my childhood and youth in England and America that I left out of my former memoir. Several readers have written saying they wanted to “hear what happened to all those people” I intend to include an epilogue that will tie up all those threads.
I have finished fifteen chapters so far and am in the middle of the book—always the most challenging part to write but especially with this book. At this time, the title is “Grief and the Gardener: A Love Story”. It is a book on grief and has something to say to anyone who has suffered loss of a loved one, but it is not a sad book. I think and hope people will find it inspiring. Also, like “All My Edens”, gardening and nature are woven into the story like threads throughout.
Parents needs Gardening Books for their new Resource Center. Thus parents want to share easy gardening with their children too. Good visuals are very helpful.
*please recommend what Books would be a best.
Thank you help 🙂
I recommend all Sharon Lovejoy’s books on gardening for and with children, including “Sunflower Houses” , “Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots”, “Hollyhock Days” , and “Camp Granny”. Sharon is a knowledgeable gardener and thus her books can be relied upon to give correct information. Additionally, the classic garden-oriented book for children is “The Secret Garden,” but this book is more for inspiration than actual learning of how to garden.
For information and guidance for teachers, I recommend my own book, “Pat Welsh’s Southern California Organic Gardening, Month by Month”. Many teachers in the schools use this book as a reference and while preparing garden tasks because it has step-by-step how-to’s arranged month-by-month specifically for Southern California and many tips and hints, called “Quick Tips” ) throughout. These make great projects for the kids.
I have used these tips myself to teach kids such tasks as planting Sugar Snap peas and planting carrots. I took thermoses filled with boiling water to the school so the kids could use it to germinate carrot seeds. We planted them on a Friday and on Monday all the carrot seeds had germinated. See pages 332 and 334 on how to make carrot, celery, parsnip, or parsley seeds germinate in three days or less. This is very helpful information when the school might be locked up over the weekend. We planted carrot seeds on Friday and they were up when I returned on Monday. I took some sand in a bucket and boiling water in large thermoses so the kids could carry out the instructions in my book. This is not a book for children. Adults must read it and teach it to the kids and let them do the work, such as making the row for pea seeds and putting the seeds down the row. By the way, don’t use boiling water on any seeds other than the ones named above and only as I explain how in my book. This book can be purchased in digital form or used copies can be purchased on Amazon.com.