Four Tenths of an Acre: Reflections on a Gardening Life - Hardcover

Lisle, Laurie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1400061679 ISBN 13: 9781400061679

Publisher: Random House, 2005

Synopsis

“The rituals of gardening give a rhythm, even rapture, to everyday life that is apart from the routines of writing and the flows of relationships. Tending my garden became the same as taking care of myself.”

When Laurie Lisle fled the city, she was in such a fever to buy a particular old clapboard house on the green of a historic New England village that she didn’t notice the awkward shape of the backyard. “When I had seen the surveyor’s map of my less than half acre,” she writes, “I was shocked at how very long and narrow a rectangle it actually was; on paper, as if seen from above, it looked to me like a fairway on a golf course, and I wondered how I could turn such an awful shape into a graceful garden.”

Thus begins this modern pastoral, in which Lisle tells us how she heaved compost, dug post holes, planted, and replanted–and how she also found herself digging into her feelings about love and loss, work and play, roots and rootlessness, solitude and sociability. Twenty years later, in these intimate essays that have sprung up around themes such as “Weather,” “Color,” “Woods,” and “Shadows,” Lisle explores the fascinating connections among one’s interior landscape, village life, and the natural world.

In “Roots,” Lisle writes about the generations of female gardeners in her family and the question of whether she has exiled herself into “a floral cage.” In “Sharon,” she traces the grand gardening history of her pre-Revolution town and notes the tensions between natives and newcomers. “Words” contrasts “the easy pleasure of gardening” with “the more elusive satisfaction of writing,” and goes on to examine the role of the garden in the lives of writers such as Emily Dickinson and Edith Wharton. “Woods” tells of the “dramatic demarcation point between nature acted upon and nature left alone.” In “Outside,” Lisle battles back the deer and contemplates the mature garden that has grown up around her. Ultimately, Four Tenths of an Acre is a testament to one woman’s glorious engagement with place.

About this title

From the Author

When I moved from the city to the country, I had no idea how to turn the strip of grass behind my house on a New England village green into the gorgeous flower garden in my mind's eye.. Nevertheless, I wanted to do it myself...

I eventually decided to write about the decade of my forties through the "green glasses" of a gardener. My garden notebook grew into this modern pastoral, part garden book and part memoir, which celebrates the role of nature in a contemporary life.

From the Introduction

From the Inside Flap

"Ultimately, Four Tenths of an Acre is a testament to one woman's glorious engagement with place."

When Laurie Lisle fled the city, she was in such a fever to buy a particular old clapboard house on the green of a historic New England village that she didn't notice the awkward shape of the backyard.

"When I had seen the surveyor's map of my less than half acre," she writes, "I was shocked at how very long and narrow a rectangle it actually was; on paper, as if seen from above, it looked to me like a fairway on a golf course, and I wondered how I could turn such an awful shape into a graceful garden."

Thus begins this modern pastoral, in which Lisle tells how she heaved compost, dug post holes, planted, and replanted--and how she also found herself digging into her feelings about love and loss, work and play, roots and rootlessness, solitude and sociability.

Twenty years later, in these intimate essays that have sprung up around themes such as "Weather," "Color," "Woods," and "Shadows," Lisle explores the fascinating connections between one's interior landscape, village life, and the natural world.

In "Roots," Lisle writes about the generations of women gardeners in her family and the question of whether she has exiled herself into "a floral cage." In "Sharon," she traces the grand gardening history of her pre-Revolution town and notes the tensions between natives and newcomers.

"Words" contrasts "the easy pleasure of gardening" with "the more elusive satisfaction of writing," and goes on to examine the role of the garden in the lives of writers such as Emily Dickinson and Edith Wharton.

"Woods" tells of the "dramatic demarcation point between nature acted upon and nature left alone." In "Outside," Lisle battles back he deer and contemplates the mature garden that has grown up around her.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1400061679
• ISBN 13: 9781400061679
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240