[.ca] The Southern Garden (ISBN 0821227440)

The Garden as A Life Metaphor:
Lydia Longshore's, The Southern Garden, is not the typical pretty picture book about gardens. Although it is lavishly photographed, and written by a true garden lover and gardener, Longshore unflinchingly describes the breakup of her marriage and her attempts to "bring order and beauty to the bleakest of domestic moments." Her description of her childhood, her family, her own children, and her recovery after her divorce is haunting but without a trace of self pity. Longshore takes the idea of the garden and illustrates how much human life is truly part of the natural life: planting, growth, pruning, death -- all these events happen both in a garden and in one's life. As profound as any book of philosophy, as well as vastly informative, and lushly romantic.