Synopsis:

On her 41st birthday, Kephart, feeling overwhelmed by deadlines, domestic worries and midlife, decides to visit the famed Chanticleer gardens, which are situated near her Philadelphia home, to reflect and remember. Against the serene backdrop of this splendid landscape, Kephart experiences something that "can happen to anyone anywhere—to anyone who takes a detour from routine and stops, at last, for answers to old questions." Sorting through memories, Kephart (author of two parenting books, one, A Slant of Sun, a National Book Award finalist) finds symbolic meaning in the soil, seeds and flowers of the garden, comparing their seasons and cycles to those of humankind. She muses on the potential of growth and evolution, associating moments in her life to events such as the popping open of seeds and bulbs in the spring. Over a two-year period, Kephart revisits Chanticleer, musing on the soul, identity and time, observing the world and questioning her past and present. Accompanied by stylish photos by Kephart's husband, William Sulit, these meditations will have readers pondering many big questions: What will I do with the next portion of my life? What will I count among my blessings? This pleasant book gently probes such issues, reminding readers of their universality. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Just as Thoreau went to the woods to live deliberately, so, too, does Kephart retreat to a garden to reflect on her life, letting nature itself reveal the nature of humanity. At 41 and firmly ensconced in the throes of middle age, Kephart discovers Chanticleer, a magical pleasure garden not ten minutes from her house in Philadelphia's bucolic Main Line suburbs. Not a day goes by that she doesn't visit there, letting her mind discover the joys and mysteries to be found amid unknown flowers and the work of unseen gardeners, a soothing retreat from the pressures of professional deadlines and anxieties of motherhood. With the soul of a poet, Kephart chooses her words carefully, thoughtfully, stringing them together like pearls on a chain, one inspired revelation leading to the next in a lyrical, graceful contemplation on the living of a purposeful life. With language so magical it begs to be read aloud, Kephart illuminates the beauty that lies within and without us all. Carol Haggas

Book Excerpt:

The Sound of Something Blooming We come to gardens bearing memories of gardens. I came to Chanticleer remembering a fringe of strawberries that pressed up against my childhood home. Whether we ever actually ate the strawberries that those tousled plants bore, I don’t remember. Whether my mother planted them there, or perhaps my father, I cannot say for sure. But I know I crouched the little girl’s crouch and peered, the way children peer, toward the fruit. I know I loved how the red would follow white, and how the white had come from green, and how the pendant of juice, with its thistle of seeds, would plump until it was too fat for its serrated cap. There is nothing exotic about a strawberry patch except that it delivers on its promise. A strawberry fringe is a garden to a girl, just as the creek that runs between the old shade trees across the street is a child’s haven. I was the one who didn’t mind mud in her shoes, the child who named the tadpoles, then the frogs. I was an adventureress at the creek across the street, where it was cool and dark and also many shades of green (moss, algae, leaves). In a year I would move with my family to an isolated outpost in Alberta, Canada, where nothing anywhere was the lucky color of the Irish and I couldn’t find a seed, and I grew determined — always, forever — never to see that much comatose brown again. Three months later we would be home again, in the house with the strawberry fringe. My toes in the creek. My hands on the frogs. My dreams of fruit and flowers. I didn’t know the names of stars; that was my brother’s province. But I knew where to find the honeysuckle, and I knew the value of that single four-leafed clover. I knew something about the smell of tulips in the spring, and the sound of crickets was, for me, the sound of something blooming. It was just a feeling I had. It was just the memory that I neatly fashioned and hoarded for myself so that I’d have it to return to later, when I needed to remember the child I had been. She looked for turtles in her yard. She cuffed her trousers, tossed her shoes, got muddy feet. She collected mica, granite, snail shells, crystals, and she loved the daring dangle of a miniature strawberry. She was not concerned with what she did, but only with what she found. She lived sun to sun and moon by moon, with unimpeded dreams.

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Topics/Categories:

gardening, Self-Discovery, Wayne Pennsylvania

Genre:

General Nonfiction

Type of Work:

Book

Publishers:

New World Library

Awards:

March 2005 Booksense Pick

Purchase From:

Ghosts in the Garden

Original Publish Date:

2005-02-01

Formats:

Hardcover