My Wild Garden: Notes from a Writer's Eden

A colorfully illustrated round of the season in the garden of the best-selling novelist, memoirist, and champion putterer with a wheelbarrow
 
On the perimeter of Israel’s Jezreel Valley, with the Carmel mountains rising up in the west, Meir Shalev has a beloved garden, “neither neatly organized nor well kept,” as he cheerfully explains. Often covered in mud and scrapes, Shalev cultivates both nomadic plants and “house dwellers,” using his own quirky techniques.  He extolls the virtues of the lemon tree, rescues a precious variety of purple snapdragon from the Jerusalem–Tel Aviv highway, and does battle with a saboteur mole rat. He even gives us his superior private recipe for curing olives.
 
Informed by Shalev’s literary sensibility, his sometime riotous humor, and his deep curiosity about the land, My Wild Garden abounds with appreciation for the joy of living, quite literally, on Earth. Our borrowed time on any particular patch of it is enhanced, the author reminds us, by our honest, respectful dealings with all manner of beings who inhabit it with us.

One of Israel's most celebrated novelists, MEIR SHALEV was born in 1948 on Nahalal, Israel's first moshav. His books have been translated into more than twenty-five languages and his honors include the National Jewish Book Award and Israel's Brenner Prize for A Pigeon and a Boy. He died in 2023.

JOANNA CHEN is the translator of Less Like a Dove and Frayed Light. She is a columnist for the Los Angeles Review of Books.

REFAELLA SHIR is an Israeli artist who lives in Montreal. She studied art in Israel, Canada, and the United States and has exhibited internationally. Her work can be viewed at refaellashir.com.