Or, again, relating the misogyny of her husband (‘only strong-minded women wish to see you the equals of men, and the strong-minded are invariably plain’) as an amusing and vaguely endearing foible. Through Elizabeth and her German Garden, she tells us her story with a bit of fiction here and there thrown in. But I read in her biographical note that the novel is "semi-autobiographical" and maybe this is one way in which the author distances herself from the text. The four year old was born in May and the three year old in June, and yes, they are "The May Baby" and "The June Baby". La passione del giardinaggio non è solo una contemplazione estetica ma anche una dimensione di solitudine e pace impossibile da esperimentare in una città.

Chiudo il libro con una certa soddisfazione perché questa lettura è risultata essere veramente piacevole.Actually, I preferred the beginning where the reader is kept wondering, postulating and considering what is meant. Relations are like drugs -- useful, sometimes, and even pleasant, if taken in small quantities and seldom, but dreadfully pernicious on the whole, and the truly wise avoid them. Su vida transcurre a principios de la Alemania del siglo XX donde el papel de la mujer estaba limitado a la atención de la casa y la cocina. I don't love things that will only bear the garden for three or four months in the year and require coaxing and petting for the rest of it. But I must confess to having felt sometimes quite crushed when some grand person, examining the details of my home through her eyeglass, and coolly dissecting all that I so much prize from the convenient distance of the open window, has finished up by expressing sympathy with my loneliness, and on my protesting that I like it, has murmured, "sebr anspruchslos.

It is not graceful, and it makes one hot; but it is a blessed sort of work, and if Eve had had a spade in Paradise and known what to do with it, we should not have had all that sad business of the apple.In describing her garden, Elizabeth gives the reader glimpses of her own past and present, and of her husband (dubbed "the Man of Wrath") and her "babies," her three young daughters. Give me a garden full of strong, healthy creatures, able to stand roughness and cold without dismally giving in and dying. That's what intrigued me, and if I can find a biography of Von Arnim that untangles truth from fiction, I'll definitely read it. She plays with her beloved daughters, even as she grieves the house and garden in which she grew up and which she lost to her cousins for the "crime" of having been born a girl. The marriage ended in disaster, with Elizabeth escaping to the United States and the couple finally agreeing, in 1919, to get a divorce.

The passion for being for ever with one's fellows, and the fear of being left for a few hours alone, is to me wholly incomprehensible. Her first best-selling work of fiction, Elizabeth and her German Garden (1898), launched a long and distinguished writing career. This enchanting semi-autobiographical novel delighted readers when it first appeared in 1898 and has never been out of print since. These despicable but irritating [mosquitoes] don't seem to have anything to do but to sit in multitudes on the sand, waiting for any prey Providence may send them; and as soon as the carriage appears they rise up in a cloud, and rush to meet us, almost dragging us out bodily, and never leave us until we drive away again. I enjoyed story of her life, her satire, and her beautiful descriptions of nature, its landscape, and of course her garden.Elizabeth dislikes the indoors with its responsibilities, servants and other interruptions, and spends most of the time reading in her garden. With sly humor and a keen eye for the ridiculous, she makes it clear how a garden can be both consolation and joy, a sanctuary and a solace.