This is the first book published by Elizabeth von Armin. She published it anonymously, and continued to published many of her books without her real name. Some of them she had published as “by the author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden“. I read a biography of von Armin recently by Joyce Morgan, it was a fascinating book. When I found this book on my TBR shelf I figured it was past time I read it. Originally published in 1898 it had been reprinted twenty times by May 1899.
While reading this book my thoughts varied between ‘what wonderful descriptions of her garden’, to ‘nice to have the money to have someone else do all the work’, to ‘she’s a bit rude about her guests’. She was quite self aware. She talks about being ‘fed enough’ to be able to indulge in fits of pique because her visitors don’t agree with her views on gardens. They just don’t love their gardens as much as she does hers.
And you can tell by her eloquence how much she adores her garden. She seems to love the process of selecting seeds, but has little idea of restraint. I’ve not made note of the page so can’t check the details, but at one stage she orders far too much of one particular seed. They end up being planted absolutely everywhere, including where she planned to plant them.
There are a couple of discussions on the equality of the sexes. In some ways she ahead of her time. One passage discusses the female farm workers who are paid less than their husband, after a hard day’s work have to put dinner on the table and don’t get time off for child birth. I think I need to explain that a little. They do get time off for the actual birth but then go straight back to work leaving the child with the grandmother or some other old woman.
One amusing passage details a tradition I feel many more people should adopt. She and her friend, Irais, developed this lovely tradition for birthdays. Elizabeth gave Irais a pair of brass candlesticks for her birthday. On Elizabeth’s birthday Irais gave her a notebook. Each year these two items travel backwards and forwards as birthday presents. Nothing new is bought, thus reducing the items later sent to landfill. They do send effusive letters of thanks, though. Anyway, this amused me. I’m wondering how I can set this going as a tradition, maybe a notebook with an inscription.
Anyway, I loved the prose of this book. I could almost see the garden. Her enthusiasm is incredibly infectious and now I’m on the mend from shingles I’ve started working on mine again. I had no idea how I’d manage to find the enthusiasm to go back to this task after so many weeks in bed, but this book might just be the impetus needed.
It is a short read at only 104 pages. When looking for an image of the book I noticed there are eight different editions available on Booktopia. You can spend from $AUD15 to $AUD30. All but one have just this book, the other has another von Armin title as well. Not bad for a book originally printed in 1898.