Garden of earthly delights | by Jodi DeLong
Spicy tales from the world of plants
Those of us who are happily besotted with plants know that we have what amounts to a love affair with them.
We nurture them, talk to them, get annoyed with them, and are enraptured when they bloom with the perfect flower or produce the most exquisite tomato. So it’s not too surprising to us that prolific gardening author Sonia Day would subtitle her new book The Untamed Garden: A Revealing Look at Our Love Affair With Plants.
Day begins this charming book of botanical tales with a story about her father’s love affair with a night-blooming cereus, an exotic and beautiful plant that flowers once a year for only a few short hours in a night. Tom Day’s plant bloomed for the first time when Sonia was about 19, and she remembers the details as clearly as when they happened many years ago. She writes in her introductory chapter, “Plants and flowers aren’t simply pretty things to look at. They also have the ability to arouse our senses. They can be incredibly exciting — and erotic.” […more]