Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Sexy Table of Contents

An official unveiling (finally) of the chapters to my recent gardening memoir-esque book Sleep, Creep, Leap: The First Three Years of a Garden. Rate your brutally honest interest on a scale of -5 (tonight's forecasted low temp) to 10.2735 (tomorrow's forecasted high temp). Let us not speak of the -30 wind chills.

CONTENTS

2007-2008
6 – First Garden First
9 – Mulching
11 – A Rock. A Stone. A Mountain
13 – Four!
15 – The Garden Circuit
20 – Cassia Hebecarpa – Wild Senna
21 – Skin
23 – Digging
25 – So Much Depends Upon a Woodchip…
28 – The Research Assistant Couldn't Experiment With Plants Because He Hadn't Botany
30 – Hatchback Trees

2009
33 – 650 Crocus Bulbs
34 – Fire Pit / Bird Bath
36 – Geum Triflorum – Prairie Smoke
37 – Mr. Mows All the Time
41 – UPS. FedEx. USPS.
43 – The Naming
45 – Deadheading Grasshoppers
48 – The King is Dead. Long Live the King.
49 – Parthenium Integrifolium – Wild Quinine
50 – Ambergate Gardens
52 – New Model Year
54 – Dragonfly
55 – Liatris Ligulistylis – Meadow Blazing Star
56 – I Succumb to You Autumn, Like a Memory

2010
59 – Rapture
60 – The Geese, The 50, The Iris, The Waiting
62 – Pulsatilla Vulgaris – Pasque Flower
63 – Fetch
65 – Dogfighting
67 – Danaus Plexippus
70 – Favorites
73 – Tall Plants
80 – Splendor in the Grass
82 – The Lesser of Two Weevils
84 – Thrashing
86 – Confessions
88 – Salvia Azurea – Pitcher Sage
89 – Where I’m From
91 – Open Garden
92 – Garden Spider
93 – Aster Laevis – Smooth Aster
95 – The Last Cosmo
96 – Twilight Geese in Autumn

You've got some pieces that are prose poem / plant profiles. Some light-hearted narratives. Then a few lyrical narratives. Some pain, some agony, some joy, some death, some rebirth, some hope, some fatalism, some snarkiness, some cornballness, some je ne sais quoi. I've decided that from now on I'll write in winter, and garden the rest of the year. Obviously, winning the lottery would help this plan along. And living in a warmer climate zone.

4 comments:

Kyna said...

I think Danaus Plexippus sounds pretty sexy.

You caught me with your post title.

Lynne said...

I'll go with 10.2735 (have you been 'borrowing' the digital thermometers from the science lab again?). Gosh, it's only going to be 3 degrees here tomorrow (Celcius).

Benjamin Vogt said...

Kyna--You're like a fly to honey, aren't you....
Lynne--Yes, borrowing indeed. They are just so darn neat. I wish I knew how to convert celsius in my head, or at least get close. 3 is like about 34 F right?

Diana Studer said...

If you are at a computer - you just type in the search box - 3C in F. Voila 37.4F!