Garden Books

From 26th August 2024

The last sweet peas of the year, brought home.

Audio version:

There is an update I want to write about my last entry’s heart story but don’t feel like launching into that straight away. Instead and principally to lift my own spirit before I get to it I’m going to write about one of the more beautiful things I’ve discovered this year, which is garden stories.

Until this year I’d considered the word “book” to be wasted on most garden literature, as all but one of the things I’d ever come across seemed more like manuals. More like one of those Haynes Car Repair manuals, say, than something I’d ever have wanted to sit back and read for pleasure. Except for one. A book called “The Morville Hours” I’d read and appreciated the whole of after Sarah recommended it to me, because it was a proper story with no hint of an instruction manual about it. “The exception that proves the rule, though” I’d tell myself from then on in libraries and bookshops as I’d stalk past shelves full of gardening how-tos to get to anywhere more interesting.

Until this year. When my idea for a perfect way to celebrate my 70th birthday was that we should go to a library, to StoryHouse Library in Chester. And that’s where I found my second garden book worthy of being called such a thing. Waiting for me at the “Read This” display they have near the front door. As if they knew it was my birthday and that I’d never have gone looking for this or anything else in their Gardening section anyway.

It was called “Seed To Dust” by Marc Hamer and it’s on a shelf next to me now, it’s that good. And like other gardening books I’ve gone on to find this year, often at StoryHouse¹ it contains, along with its stories, wisdom and time. And could as easily have been filed under Biography, Philosophy, Nature or Art as Gardening. As could all the other garden stories here, threaded through this collage and the photographs below, as they’ve informed and inspired my gardening year.

In an occasionally difficult year, for reasons you now know about, these garden and nature and walking stories have been my solace, my refuge, my companions and my education.²

As of course has the place itself. The allotment garden, where I’ve spent most of today getting ready for autumn. Clearing the now died back sweet peas, lupins and foxgloves for the deeper colours and textures of the seasons to come. Seasons I’m looking forward to, glad to be living, gardening and thinking my way through all four of them. Long may I yet live.

A heart update

Which brings me to my heart the update I promised.

I spent Tuesday morning of last week having an Echocardiogram in the Cardio Respiratory Unit of the Royal Hospital here in Liverpool. An hour or so’s audio and visual scanning of my heart, done by a Clinical Physiologist who gave extra attention to my aorta and its problem valve, because of previous scans and because of the second collapse that I told her had happened the week before. All to make sure my cardiology doctor and I will have the best data and images possible, for when we meet in September to discuss what’s next, she scanned and measured my heart from various angles and careful close-ups while I watched it beating on her screen, for the hour it all took. Well knowing by then which bit’s the aorta, and watching its valve, pulsing away until it can be replaced.

It was deeply impressive and I’m so glad it’s all possible and there for me, from the NHS and right now, when I need it.

Some afterwords

Before I finish here’s a second audio only section added in here. Mainly to thank everyone who got in touch after my last post, the one with the news about my heart. And how, though I’d hesitated over writing it at all, I’m glad and grateful that I did.

It was recorded on the top of the hill at Everton. Always my favourite place when life gets serious, The sound on what follows is a bit windy, but the thanks, I trust, are clear.

Recorded here, at the top of the hill in Everton.

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1. As StoryHouse is a Chester Public Library I can’t borrow the books I find in there, but have mostly been able to find them back home in Liverpool Central or one of the district libraries.

2. Thanks and credit are therefore due to writers Marc Hamer, Melissa Harrison, Beth Chatto, Christopher Lloyd (these last two keeping me constant company in my small shed library), Ali Foxton, Annabel Streets, Alice Vincent, Marchelle Farrell, Catherine Horwood, Stephen Anderson, Richard Bird, Valerie Finnis and Ursula Buchan. So far.