For example, in one essay she begins by describing her feelings upon seeing a sick raccoon stagger across her yard in broad daylight. She calls the local animal welfare people to look into it. Then she turns to describing her feelings and reactions to the other elements of her garden. I was left wondering what happened to the raccoon. She never told me.

If you are looking for Diane Ackerman's personal reactions to nature, this may be for you. But I was looking for some good winter reading about nature itself, for when I miss my garden. At the same time I ordered this book, I also ordered a book by Sy Montgomery called "The Curious Naturalist: Nature's Everyday Mysteries". I just chose it by searching for such books on Amazon[.com]. It turns out that Sy Montgomery was the nature columnist for the Boston Globe, and her essays are delightful, concise, amazing and informative. I didn't learn much about the interior life of the author, but I learned the most amazing things about the nature all around me. I read about the messages that singing insects send in the autumn evenings and how they create their songs; the messages in spider webs; the peculiar life-giving structure of water; the way sound travels over snow in winter. Most delightful of all, the author describes ways of interacting with our animal brothers and sisters. I learned how easy it is to teach wild birds to eat from your hand, and how to use a flashlight in the grass to flirt with fireflies and get them to hit on you. This is the book I was really looking for when I bought Ackerman's book. Once I started The Curious Naturalist, I couldn't put it down. If you are looking for the same type of reading that I was, you will like the Montgomery book.


Stop and Smell the Roses   June 7, 2002
 12 out of 13 found this review helpful

You can take whatever you'd like from Diane Ackerman's latest work, "Cultivating Delight- A Natural History of My Garden." In the languishing heat of a summer hammock, transport yourself to winter's snow in chapter four. Much of this book is like comfort food. Use it to brake from the news headlines and find yourself ruminating about frogs napping in tulip petals or turn of the century women at evening parties, wearing fireflies in their hair as "sort of living tiaras."
The pages can act like a stress reducing cup of tea with the gardener next door. But, the neighbor is also a teacher slipping in rich tidbits of facts and history. Allow this book to make you stop and smell the roses and it may nourish, educate and provoke contemplation.
Ackerman, both a poet and a naturalist, gives us `a year in the life' of her garden as a ruse to chronicle and compost a heap of musings that fill her brain. She is delighted to include trivia such as the history of the word tulip. It comes from the Persian word for turban because Persian men were known to wear tulips in their turbans. And the Victorians sent flowers with specific meanings: petunias meant `never despair' while zinnias expressed `thinking of you.'
I found myself skipping around, picking a page to gnaw on, to escape to, like a favorite scene in a film. There's no reason to read this book from beginning to end because it is written as though you've stopped by without an appointment and were told the story of why the wisteria has gone mad or how the hummingbird defended her territory.
Ackerman weaves an enchanting garden tapestry and haphazardly tosses in poetry, for example, "firm buds like a young bosom," or Lilly of the Valley who are "circus ladies, perky, talced and heavily perfumed."
A philosophical passage about plants giving us oxygen and we in turn giving them carbon dioxide is a gentle pondering on the design of the natural world. She dutifully pays homage to some of the greats like Thomas Jefferson and includes an addendum of her garden's inventory.
"Flowers are like poems. Consult them for delight and they'll delight you. Look to them for deeper truths and you'll find much to mull over," stated Diane Ackerman.
Her book, like the flowers she writes about, can be enjoyed for it's creative pleasure or used to cull thoughts of grander ideas. It is aptly titled "Cultivating Delight" because it does.