Elizabeth And Her German Garden (Virago Modern Classics)

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Give me a garden full of strong, healthy creatures, able to stand roughness and cold without dismally giving in and dying. Whether you enjoy gardening yourself or simply delight in the gorgeous creations of those that do, then this book might prove a welcome diversion for you as well. We tend to forget that the Gilded Age society was extremely well traveled and spoke several languages. Un diario che va da maggio ad aprile, e racconta il trasferimento in una residenza di campagna in Pomerania.

When the narrator is not telling us about the kinds of roses in her flower-beds (Marie van Houette, Viscountess Folkestone, Laurette Messimy, Souvenir de la Malmaison, Adam and Devoniensis, Persian Yellow, Bicolor, Duke of Teck, Cheshunt Scarlet, Prefet de Limburg…it goes on for pages), she is offering up such pearls of wisdom as ‘why cook when you can get some one to cook for you? M. Forster, who lived at the von Arnim estate in 1905, [4] working as a tutor to the family's children, wrote that there was in fact not much of a garden.

Elizabeth is dismissive of her children, rude to her houseguests, and she fires the governess after overhearing her airing liberal views. Without letting the situation she found herself in depresses her, she finds a way to make the best out of it. She does not actually garden, being a lady; she says on several occasions that she wishes she could just get a spade and dig instead of having to give instructions.

This took me a long time to finish, because a lot of it consists of lists of flowers, in long, run on sentences, and because much of it is atrocious socially. I managed to read a bit of this book in my own garden the other day, when we finally had a spot of what might be termed summer. This attitude was found in two other characters I have come across in her oeuvre, Wemyss a despicable and evil sort in 'Vera' (1921) and Otto, just a male chauvinist pig like the Man of Wrath in 'The Caravaners' (1909).Second, the descriptions of all the flowers and the garden were longish and slightly boring since I'm not into gardening, at all (I unfortunately kill everything! It was known as the Kreuzzeitung ("Cross Newspaper") because its emblem was an Iron Cross (per Wikipedia). Ed è così – ho sostenuto con l’Uomo della Collera, quando lui ha protestato per quello che chiamava il mio perder tempo di sopra.

I loved reading it on our porch with the sun shining through the winter trees and felt I could chat with Elizabeth quite nicely. The purple ones are the most charming and go well with every rose, but I have white ones with Laurette Messimy, and yellow ones with Safrano, and a new red sort in the big centre bed of red roses. I can entertain myself quite well for weeks together, hardly aware, except for the pervading peace, that I have been alone at all .

Al principio pensé que iba a hablar demasiado para mi gusto de flores y plantas, no es que no me gusten pero sólo sé distinguir las más conocidas y temía perderme, pero no. La passione del giardinaggio non è solo una contemplazione estetica ma anche una dimensione di solitudine e pace impossibile da esperimentare in una città.

Not but what I like to have people staying with me for a few days, or even for a few weeks, should they be as anspruchslos as I am myself, and content with simple joys; only, any one who comes here and would be happy must have something in him; if he be a mere blank creature, empty of head and heart, he will very probably find it dull. She had three little children, whom she referred to as the April baby, the May baby and the June baby. These despicable but irritating [mosquitoes] don't seem to have anything to do but to sit in multitudes on the sand, waiting for any prey Providence may send them; and as soon as the carriage appears they rise up in a cloud, and rush to meet us, almost dragging us out bodily, and never leave us until we drive away again.

In flashbacks we glimpse her as a solitary child, meet her stern grandfather and equally stern, but more beloved, father. On some very specially divine days, like today, I have actually longed for some one else to be here to enjoy the beauty with me. The whole is enlivened by Elizabeth’s sharp wit and sense of the ridiculous: her grandfather, on the death of his wife, comforts himself by developing a new potato variety which he names, Consolation in Grief. Very pompous and men-know-everything and women should be seen at times but rarely ever heard because nothing of sense comes out of their mouths (that is the attitude of the Man of Wrath). The book has so many marvelous quotes that I would have made countless notes in the margins if I hadn't been reading a library book.