This book has stemmed from Sarah O’Neil entering the Yates gardening/blogging challenge. Together with Yates she has developed and published much of her popular blogging work in The Good Life.
The thing about The Good Life is, Sarah the Gardener (as she refers to herself) is very honest about her endeavours: gardening isn’t free, but you can restrain yourself to the basics. Gardening isn’t always idyllic, especially in unpredictable weather. Gardening can be hard work and it can be equally as hard to enthuse others about your passion. It’s still worth it, and the troubles are just part of a wonderful journey that can be undertaken by pretty much anyone, regardless of what space is available to you (though, she did move from the city to a lifestyle block offering a reasonable amount of space in which she hosts no less than 22 garden beds!)
I’m liking
Sarah O’Neil has a very easy style of writing. Reading this book is a bit like having a witty, down-to-earth conversation that stops and starts over a number of days. I love the fact that this book could be picked up and put down at whim and I read it over the course of a few weeks which I thoroughly enjoyed.
There are plenty of would-be gardeners like me out there I’m sure… we have a bit of a garden; the idea of having the garden is quite nice. Eating the produce is nice. But there’s all this stuff required in successfully translating the pack of seeds in order to transform them into the gourmet dinner that we desire at the end. Sarah really is realistic about all of this while keeping up the momentum of how enriching growing your own produce is regardless of the challenges. It’s quite an inspiring read. She makes the very best of what she has, avoids waste, interweaves recipes to use up the prolific produce that you may have in a typical kiwi garden, demonstrates what she is referring to through the use of a lot of photographs, and more or less just takes you on a journey through a year in her life (which is intricately entangled in her garden).
Things that made me go hmmmm
If I was to be nitpicky, I would wonder why there is American spelling in this title, it’s a bit of a shame really! It distracts from the kiwiness of it all. Other than that – this book is really great if you are wanting a slice-of-life look at what it is like to grow vegetables in New Zealand.
The conclusion
I think Sarah’s philosophy would be: somehow if you throw gardening in the mix of life it becomes all the more fulfilling, if not a bit more burdensome.
This is a very unique title sure to please lots of readers by the sheer kiwiness of it, the cleverly written tales of her family and her garden, and her attempt to enjoy her rural life a little bit more than that of her city-dwelling past.
If you know someone who enjoys writing and is a bit of a would-be gardener, this book could make a great gift wrapped up with a couple of packets of seeds or a spade!
Published by HarperCollins, The Good Life retails for around $40.
