Four Tenths of an Acre: Reflections on a Gardening Life

by Laurie Lisle

"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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400061679
• ISBN13: 9781400061679
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: Random House (NY)
• Length: 219 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.9" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Gardening and the Inner Life

These essays are a meditation on the changing seasons in Lisle's New England town yet they also reveal the seasons of the author's inner life. "Four Tenths of an Acre" tells the story of a woman coming to her maturity in the same way that a garden reaches its height after many years of culling and with the spontaneous addition of new colors and shapes. As I finished this memoir, I felt I had witnessed not just the transformation of the land but the transformation of the gardener. Lisle is the M.F.K. Fisher of the outdoor palette, describing local personalities and gardens with wit and affection, showing us how people reveal themselves as they get their hands into the earth. For Lisle, gardening is not just a weekend hobby but a dialogue with life. It is a universal endeavor that asks us to reflect on our own periods of growth and quiescence, on the things that we choose to keep in our sphere of influence (as we keep the livelier and more robust plants in a flower bed), and what we must prune away in order to create a sense of harmony and peace. Lisle's description of an early marriage, and its ending, is part of this sometimes painful but necessary process. The garden is also a bridge between generations. It has deepened Lisle's relationship with her mother, allowing the two women to share their fundamental respect for life, despite their different roles and values. This wonderful book is at bottom, about the way Time shapes us as it shapes the land. It is about the mistakes we make, the choices we can't undo -- and the interplay between human will and some Grand Design. Lisle's memoir is a lovely companion to the classic "Gift from the Sea" which explores the undercurrents of relationship in the context of a sojourn at the beach. "Four Tenths of an Acre" offers a gentle philosophy of growth and change as it discusses planting trees, building fences and the best way to discourage garden pests. I shall never look at my miniature rose garden in the same way after reading Lisle's description: Even the tiniest piece of earth stretches downward for four thousand miles. I have learned not to be so ashamed of my "stragglers" but to view them as part of an ongoing process. A garden is never quite finished and that is one of its most important attributes--it serves to remind us of a larger pattern of existence and of all the things in life that are beyond our control. Whether we maintain a large property or cultivate a single flower bed, we discover that there is something beyond clock time and the "to do" list. The historical treatises on gardening, quoted here, are good affirmations for those of us too penned in by "busyness" to contemplate the progress of the natural world. Caring for the earth, Lisle shows, is a time-honored way of caring for ourselves.