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Into the garden with Charles : a memoir / Clyde Phillip Wachsberger ; with watercolors by the author.

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, c2012.Description: 209 p. : col. ill. ; 23 cmISBN:
  • 0374175713 (alk. paper)
  • 9780374175719 (alk. paper)
Subject(s): LOC classification:
  • HQ75.8.W33 A3 2012
Online resources: Summary: The author tells his life story of growing up in suburban New York in the 1940s, his search for a soul mate in the 1960s and 1970s, his move to a three-hundred-year-old house and finding his mate while also creating a suitable garden for his home.Review: Clyde Wachsberger became an avid gardener in his mid-30s after acquiring a small house and property at the eastern tip of Long Island. While the garden was his passion, it was lonely pursuit and he longed to share it with someone. However, his efforts to find a relationship with another man, “a friend who shared my deepest yearning to be someone special for someone special,” were not successful. Some years later, and by a remarkable chance with a misplaced personal ad, he connected with Charles Dean, a maître d’hôtel at a high end Manhattan restaurant. Sparked by their mutual interests and attraction, they quickly established a relationship, much of it built around the same home and garden they now shared named Adworthy House, celebrating their meeting. They were great experimenters and always eager to try new plants, pushing the limits of their climate zone and indulging romantic fantasies of tropical flora. Winter reading of nursery catalogs was a special fascination. Together they edited an anthology entitled “Of Leaf and Flower: Stories and Poems for Gardeners (2001), in part to “explain the profound passions and wild obsessions that motivate gardeners.” To do so, they turned “to poets and storytellers for answers. We began by looking for themes that explore what it means to be a gardener in one’s own garden.” Sadly, Dean and Wachsberger’s time together was limited to about 15 years. Wachsberger developed cancer, but before it took his life, he wrote and illustrated a heartfelt memoir, “Into The Garden with Charles” (2012). While the author did not minimize the story of his disease, his writing focuses on the strength he found in both the garden and his loved ones. While the after story is sad, this is an upbeat book about the joy of optimism found in a love of plants, and in the often whacky stories of family, close friends, and a faithful, fuzzy mop of a dog. The plants are pets, too, often with personal names and always cherished, until they try to smother or overrun everything else. Gardeners everywhere will understand. [annotation by Brian Thompson]
List(s) this item appears in: Garden of Cultural Diversity | Garden of Pride
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Lending Books Elisabeth C. Miller Library Tall Shelves SB455 .W23 2012 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Available 39352800139990
Total holds: 0

The author tells his life story of growing up in suburban New York in the 1940s, his search for a soul mate in the 1960s and 1970s, his move to a three-hundred-year-old house and finding his mate while also creating a suitable garden for his home.

Clyde Wachsberger became an avid gardener in his mid-30s after acquiring a small house and property at the eastern tip of Long Island. While the garden was his passion, it was lonely pursuit and he longed to share it with someone. However, his efforts to find a relationship with another man, “a friend who shared my deepest yearning to be someone special for someone special,” were not successful.

Some years later, and by a remarkable chance with a misplaced personal ad, he connected with Charles Dean, a maître d’hôtel at a high end Manhattan restaurant. Sparked by their mutual interests and attraction, they quickly established a relationship, much of it built around the same home and garden they now shared named Adworthy House, celebrating their meeting.

They were great experimenters and always eager to try new plants, pushing the limits of their climate zone and indulging romantic fantasies of tropical flora. Winter reading of nursery catalogs was a special fascination. Together they edited an anthology entitled “Of Leaf and Flower: Stories and Poems for Gardeners (2001), in part to “explain the profound passions and wild obsessions that motivate gardeners.” To do so, they turned “to poets and storytellers for answers. We began by looking for themes that explore what it means to be a gardener in one’s own garden.”

Sadly, Dean and Wachsberger’s time together was limited to about 15 years. Wachsberger developed cancer, but before it took his life, he wrote and illustrated a heartfelt memoir, “Into The Garden with Charles” (2012). While the author did not minimize the story of his disease, his writing focuses on the strength he found in both the garden and his loved ones.

While the after story is sad, this is an upbeat book about the joy of optimism found in a love of plants, and in the often whacky stories of family, close friends, and a faithful, fuzzy mop of a dog. The plants are pets, too, often with personal names and always cherished, until they try to smother or overrun everything else. Gardeners everywhere will understand.

[annotation by Brian Thompson]

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