Читать книгу Heart & Soil - Des Kennedy - Страница 3

PREFACE

As editor of GardenWise magazine for more than a decade, I enjoyed the distinct pleasure of receiving, with every issue, what can only be described as “garden literature” from the ever-eloquent Des Kennedy.

Just what is garden literature? For me, it’s the examination of gardening within the wider context of human experience. The recognition that choosing to live the life of a gardener is essentially a political act, a dedication to values and principles entirely at odds with consumer culture. That gardening is a day-by-day reverence of the life flow of earth, of the harmony so vitally required for the survival of this planet.

And—true to the nature of all literature—this literature must be expressed richly and compellingly in language that seeds a garden of imagery. For me, there is no one who does so more poignantly than Des, author of eight highly acclaimed books and considered by the Globe and Mail to be “one of the best gardening writers in Canada.”

Now as a garden-book editor, I am privileged to support Des in this compilation of heartfelt, often humorous, always thought-provoking reflections about life from the cornerstone of a garden—a collection that honours those who, like the author, have chosen to love a little piece of earth as their way of expressing a greater love for Earth.

Four decades ago—with his partner, Sandy—Des salvaged “a dispiriting miasma of logging slash and stumps” on Denman Island. Pushing back against the dictates of a throwaway society, the couple replanted the sanctuary of forest for native plants and creatures, raised their own food and built a homestead from the very sticks and stones that lay beneath their feet.

And while cultivating the land, Des fought for it, working over many years to enhance the community and environment of Denman Island, including his role as a founding director of a community land trust and his direct involvement in campaigns farther afield—from aboriginal rights to the struggles in both Strathcona Provincial Park and Clayoquot Sound.

Throughout this volume, Des’s richly textured background—including stretches as a monk and a scholar—shines through his musings on the “near-magical properties” and healing powers of a garden. Yet his voice as always remains comfortingly down-to-earth. For as contemplative and far-reaching as his thoughts may be, he is not afraid to poke fun at himself. “Earth laughs in flowers,” says Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Des—shortlisted three times for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour—laughs too. But whether it is at himself wielding a “delinquent pole pruner like a jousting knight his lance” or wheelbarrowing downhill in a slide of “terrifying beauty,” he remains keenly aware of the importance of all those who literally have the earth in their hands.

This is a book that joyfully celebrates the resilience of both the garden and the gardener, that helps us to find our way forward in the championing of the environment that sustains us—and that finds genuine hopefulness for both ourselves and our planet in “the abiding strength of resurgent earth.”

—Carol Pope