An Ecology of Enchantment: A Year in a Country Garden

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University and an avid outdoor recreationist. She is also the
author of The Mountain Is Moving: Japanese Women’s Lives, Kurlek, and
Margaret Laurence: The Long Journey Hom

Des Kennedy tells us at the start that this is not a book about how to
garden “but about the passions and raptures, the heartache and
melancholy of those who do.” And indeed, there is no advice on what to
plant when and where. Kennedy structures his reflections in 52 sections,
one for each week of the year. He does this both to celebrate the
“splendid circularity” of the gardening year, and because “this
marvellous dash between darknesses is such a tidy paradigm for the
unfolding of a full life.”

Essayist, novelist, and humorist, Kennedy is also a gardening columnist
for The Globe and Mail, a television and radio personality, and an
active environmentalist. Two of his books have been nominated for the
Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour. Embracing all of its
author’s interests, An Ecology of Enchantment begins with a
devastating snowstorm at the start of the year and concludes in
December, with thoughts on aging, memory loss, and the mysterious
tendency of garden tools to get lost: “How is it that a person can
enter their garden, trowel firmly in hand, only to emerge twenty minutes
later with absolutely no idea of where the trowel has gotten to? A
full-scale search proves futile, as does questioning the absent-minded
miscreant.”

This unusual and delightful book ends with an image of the gardener on
“a pilgrimage of dirt and disappointment, sudden deaths and regretful
diggings-out.” An Ecology of Enchantment belongs on a bedside table or
a fireside chair.