Last night at Three Lives longtime partners, gardeners, and authors, Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd took turns reading from their new book, Our Life in Gardens
In preparation, I read about half of it yesterday afternoon and was completely charmed, as I was by them in person. Their book is old-fashioned in the very best sense: unhurried and expert. They've been in their current garden in Vermont for more than thirty years and their abiding love for it is evident in every sentence. Fifty short chapters, each with a lovely line drawing by Bobbi Angell, focus on different plants, describing their history, needs, and, if you will, personalities. ("Artichokes are no fools.") Indeed, the plants are the main characters here; people are relegated to the sidelines, like hedges to highlight the blossoms. Perhaps Eck and Winterrowd can be a tad soulful about the miracle of the seasons, etc., but overall they are refreshingly unsentimental. They dismiss the notion that gardening is "getting in touch with Nature" since all gardens are "contrived;" they are forthright about their failures and clear-eyed about the fate of their life project: It dies when they die. If you don't have three decades and seven acres of your own to spare, reading the book makes a splendid balm to contemporary life.
Wondering about the change from Boston (which they had to leave after raising chickens in their apartment) to rural New England in the early 70s, I asked them if they had ever faced any difficulty as a gay couple. "Never," Joe Eck told me. He said they had always been very open about being gay and everyone had been wonderful. He added, "But it is Vermont."
They will read in Philadelphia on March 1, present a slideshow lecture in Brooklyn on March 4, and give a talk in Boston on March 14.
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