A colorfully illustrated round of the season in the garden of the best-selling novelist, memoirist, and champion putterer with a wheelbarrow

On the perimeter of Israel's Jezreel Valley, with the Carmel mountains rising up in the west, Meir Shalev has a beloved garden, "neither neatly organized nor well kept," as he cheerfully explains. Often covered in mud and scrapes, Shalev cultivates both nomadic plants and "house dwellers," using his own quirky techniques. He extolls the virtues of the lemon tree, rescues a precious variety of purple snapdragon from the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway, and does battle with a saboteur mole rat. He even gives us his superior private recipe for curing olives.

Informed by Shalev's literary sensibility, his sometime riotous humor, and his deep curiosity about the land, My Wild Garden abounds with appreciation for the joy of living, quite literally, on Earth. Our borrowed time on any particular patch of it is enhanced, the author reminds us, by our honest, respectful dealings with all manner of beings who inhabit it with us.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Schocken Books Inc
Published: 03/31/2020
ISBN: 9780805243512
Pages: 304
Weight: 1.50lbs
Size: 8.30h x 6.30w x 1.20d

Review Citations: Kirkus Reviews 12/01/2019
Publishers Weekly 12/16/2019
Library Journal 01/01/2020 pg. 94
Booklist 03/15/2020 pg. 27