Garden Wisdom

December 19, 2011
Rural historian Apps (Barns of Wisconsin) continues his chronicling of rural life with a folksy memoir of his six decades of vegetable gardening. The material is arranged to follow the growing season and includes some growing tips and advice on preserving and cooking the garden’s bounty, but it is not a methodical how-to guide for the novice. For him, the garden is a place of “mystery, awe, anticipation, patience, surprise, disappointment, and elation.” The terrain will be familiar to readers of gardening memoirs, but those who have also grown to love the slow rhythms and quiet satisfactions of growing one’s own food will enjoy the company of his recollections. The collection is filled with humorous anecdotes and quiet observations of the cycle of life in the humble vegetable patch—plus an unexpected recipe for sorghum cookies. The pleasures he discovers in the garden come through on each page. 65 color and b&w photos and illus.

September 15, 2012

Bates's (The Wars We Took to Vietnam: Cultural Conflict and Storytelling) chronicle of an April to October voyage along the Bark River in southeastern Wisconsin--actually a composite of many trips taken over many years--moves at a canoe's pace, a compliment reflecting both his physical movement on the river and his own meandering thoughts. He strikes a timeless and intimate tone that Minnesotans, Michiganders, and Wisconsinites (or even fans of Garrison Keillor) know well. Readers learn about ice harvesting, the Black Hawk War, local scandals and legends, a gigantic little circus, mobsters, murders, and a gifted local poet, Lorine Niedecker--an Imagism-influenced poet of whom Bates, himself a Wallace Stevens scholar, paints a lovely portrait. VERDICT This book will reward insightful readers. Certainly for regionalists, this also will be popular with any reader with a fond place in their heart for Wisconsin.--Ben Malczewski, Ypsilanti Dist. Lib., MI

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