Journeys to the Nearby: A Gardener Discovers the Gentle Art of Untravelling

Author, artist, poet, and master gardener Bradbury (coauthor of Garden Letters) loves to read about travel writers who journey off the beaten path, enduring heat, cold, and all manner of trying conditions. Not caring to experience these hardships herself, she decides to explore her own backyard. Living in the suburbs of Vancouver, British Columbia, with a forested park across the street, she journeys outside to notice the small moments that occur in her garden and reports her findings in short, lyrical essays. She shares her thoughts on the fragrance of sweet box, her fondness for Anna’s hummingbirds, observations of nesting chickadees, embracing the weather, and using the garden for brain restoration. Rhododendrons, peonies, ferns, vegetables, bees, birds, spiders, lichens, and deer in the garden are a sampling of the other subjects that catch her interest. She weaves the times she lived in the Shetland Islands and New Brunswick into the essays, and her drawings enhance her observations.