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The Meadow

The Meadow

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Description

Lilacs make their own purple dusk all day, or lift dreamy clusters of pure pearl. Their scent is cool and mysterious. It is surely one of the most romantic smells—it reminds me of old deserted gardens where long-vanished ladies come again to walk in the moonlight. This is a quiet, thoughtful read for those of us who have a strong heart connection with the high sagebrush country of the inter-mountain West. It follows about a century's-worth of people's doin's in a mountain meadow at 8,500 feet in southern Wyoming. The life requires great hardiness and ingenuity to withstand the isolation and trials of snow, wind, fire, hunger, disease, and financial uncertainty. Mrs. Taber taught English at Lawrence College, Randolph Macon Women’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia, and at Columbia University, where she did postgraduate studies. She began her literary career with a play, Lady of the Moon (Penn), in 1928, and followed with a book of verse, Lyonesse (Bozart) in 1929. Taber won attention for her first humorous novel, Late Climbs the Sun (Coward, 1934). She went on to write several other novels and short story collections, including Tomorrow May Be Fair ( Coward, 1935), A Star to Steer By (Macrae, 1938) and This Is for Always (Macrae, 1938). In the late 1930s, Taber joined the staff of the Ladies’ Home Journal and began to contribute the column “Diary of Domesticity.” connections to Kent Haruf's books, Train Dreams, Annie Proulx' western stories, Honey in the Horn, Angle of Repose, Housekeeping ... That apple tree, if it still exists, has seen many more seasons. But here I am, two decades later, drawing again from the inner wealth of that chapter in my life. And as I read Gladys Taber today, I am once again entranced. Her nature descriptions are so evocative, so joyful. She tosses in her simple love for mankind, her kindly hopes for peace on earth (this particular book was written shortly after the end of WWII).

James Galvin is best known for his poetry, and that poetic bent really comes through in both his dialogue and his artful word pictures of nature's beauty. He makes some striking comparisons that created powerful images for me, such as when he describes a sunset "turning the sky as many pastels as you see on the side of a rainbow trout." But can it really be wise to lose productive food-producing fields to flowers? “We have to look at the bigger picture,” argues Forbes Adam. “It brings huge numbers of pollinators to the landscape, which benefit all the neighbouring farmers.” James Galvin works magic with The Meadow, and he successfully weaves together multiple strands of family history. This book is technically a novel, but it pulses with a frictionless reality. Most meadow-makers buy wildflower seeds for the initial creation. However, Baczkowska explains, commercially produced seed is grown to be harvested on the same day, so new knapweed flowers, for instance, will flower together and go to seed in the same week. Hand-collecting local seed – as Norfolk Wildlife Trust does in partnership with Norfolk Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group, a charity run by farmers – gives meadows a much longer flowering season, making them more useful to pollinators, and more beautiful. “Keeping local seed types going will give you this resilience to climate change. It’s not just the diversity of species; diversity of genetics is really important,” says Baczkowska.

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In this book, Iain Parkinson has carefully curated a fascinating collection of personal and evocative accounts shared by notable meadow experts from the world of science, conservation and the arts. The complex story of a hay meadow is told by the people whose lives are entangled within its intricate web, and in Meadow we hear over 30 first-person accounts touching on everything from wildflower and grassland restoration, basketmaking and weaving, pollinators and birdlife, water and soil, to hedgelaying, grazing, and archaeology. Lyle's family moves to the farm in the meadow less than 20 years before we moved to Boulder(1957). Lots of changes during that time. Clara's diary selections are from only 8 years before we got there. Add native yellow rattle seeds to lawns. The rattle parasitises the grass and enables other wildflowers to grow. Stars. The only part I didn’t like was all the talk about her dogs. Which is fine, I’m just not a dog person. She certainly didn’t do it all of the time but when she did, I usually skimmed over most of that section. Finished last night with this excellent book. The prose was lovely and NOT too poetic and vague, as I'd feared it might be. There is no plot to it, so don't expect that.

I have a hypothesis that the book is narrated entirely by an abstracted version of James Galvin. Maybe this is obvious to others and I’m late to the party, but I found myself struggling to figure out who was talking to me and how/why they were involved. A favorite passage appears early: He built miles of fences, yards of homemade wooden pipe, a house, barns, sheds, corrals. He put up hay with horses and got down to scythe among the willows where the mower couldn't go. He never quit from the last star to first, proving that the price of independence is slavery. (p. 11). The book is beautifully and heartfully written, but be forewarned. It's essentially plotless, and non-linear in the extreme. Galvin writes with such admirable attention to detail that I decided to read an excerpt from the book to my creative writing class as an excellent model of indirect characterization. The powerful images and drama in the episode kept a roomful of ninth- and tenth-graders silent and focused. After the reading, I asked them to tell me what kind of man App, the adult character in the chapter I read, seems to be; they were spot on because his actions in the episode had so clearly revealed him. Taber has a positive, generous soul that reaches for light. She writes, "…I sometimes think that when people reach the day in which they see no good in anything different and new, on that day they begin to die. The will to live and the will to grow are the two foundation stones on which humanity is built. During all difficult days, I am determined to keep new interests going, lest I bog down in worry and anxiety. We need to use our time constructively, creatively, if possible" (209). Sound advice in this troubled spring.Helen Baczkowska of Norfolk Wildlife Trust is another meadow maker. Working with farmers, she is restoring lost meadows by re-seeding them with hay from roadside verges, virtually the last sanctuary for wildflowers in parts of lowland Britain. That being said, this was a magically lazy-river type of book. It takes you through the year by month starting in November when the family moved into an old homestead in Connecticut that was built in 1690. The charm and character of the place outside and in is beautifully described. Her thoughts are often poetic in nature. She tells fantastically of the nature around her. The individuality of different meadows is their strength. On Landseer park, in the heart of urban Ipswich, wildflower-rich chalk banks created by the charity Buglife and an inspiring young conservationist, David Dowding, an Ipswich borough council ranger, are now home to scarce butterflies such as the dark green fritillary. Off the busy A19 between York and Selby is Three Hagges, a “woodmeadow” created in 2012 by Ros Forbes Adam, whose family has farmed the area for 350 years. The surviving hay meadows of the British Isles are an intrinsic part of our cultural heritage, representing a natural equivalent to our great churches, castles, and ancient standing stones. Those that remain provide a tantalising glimpse into the past to a time long before chemical fertilisers and herbicides robbed our grasslands of all their treasures; they are biodiversity hotspots, offering home and sanctuary to flora and fauna.



  • Fruugo ID: 258392218-563234582
  • EAN: 764486781913
  • Sold by: Fruugo

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