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Summary
Summary
"In this profoundly moving memoir, Owita teaches Wall how to find grace amid heartbreak and to accept that beauty exists because it is fleeting--as in her garden, as in life." -- People , 4 stars
"A perfect spring awakening." -- Good Housekeeping
A true story of a unique friendship between two people who had nothing--and ultimately everything--in common.
Carol Wall, a white woman living in a lily-white neighborhood in Middle America, was at a crossroads in her life. Her children were grown; she had successfully overcome illness; her beloved parents were getting older. One day she notices a dark-skinned African man tending her neighbor's yard. His name is Giles Owita. He bags groceries at the supermarket. He comes from Kenya. And he's very good at gardening.
Before long Giles is transforming not only Carol's yard, but her life. Though they are seemingly quite different, a caring bond grows between them. But they both hold long-buried secrets that, when revealed, will cement their friendship forever.
Author Notes
Carol Wall is a writer whose essays and articles have appeared over many years in Southern Living magazine and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution . She lives on a tree-lined street in the heart of Middle America.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this moving memoir chronicling the many lasting rewards garnered from an unexpected friendship, writer Wall enlists a neighbor's gardener, a man from Kenya, to help her maintain her garden. What begins as a purely professional relationship, with Wall hoping to learn more about gardening, blossoms into an intimate friendship. Wall, a breast cancer patient, admits that, before she met Giles Owita, her outlook on life was less than sunny. Always an introvert and prone to social gaffes, Wall was dealing at the time with her parent's decline. Slowly, over three years, Owita, a quiet and unassuming man, transforms Wall's unkempt lawn into a living masterpiece, showing Wall the beauty inherent in everyday life. While transmitting the knowledge for growing a bountiful garden, Owita passes along how one might live a satisfying life. "Each time I walked away from Giles, I felt either enlightened by his brilliance or unburdened of some of my worries and sadness." Wall eventually learns of the personal, family and health issues endured by her friend, marveling at his grace and strength. This tender narrative gently probes the complicated terrain of American race relations, dealing with serious illness and facing the death of loved ones. Agent: Marly Rusoff, Marly Rusoff Literary. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
She knew nothing about gardening. He knew everything. She was a well-to-do white woman. He was an impoverished immigrant from Kenya. And yet, in the garden he transformed for her from a patch of weeds into a flowering paradise, Wall and Owita found common ground in the triumphs and tragedies they shared. Both would admit it was an unlikely friendship. She was a fretter, consumed by things she could not control: her recurring cancer, her father's Alzheimer's, her mother's stroke. He had a tranquility and acceptance that was mystifying in the face of all he had had to endure: a daughter left behind in Africa, a PhD in horticulture he couldn't use, forcing him to subsist on part-time jobs, and, worst of all, the devastation and shame of being HIV-positive. Both had their shares of heartache over children and parents and life-threatening illnesses that challenged them in unimaginable ways. In this heartbreaking yet heartwarming paean to the joys of friendship and gardening, Wall crafts an elegiac tribute to an extraordinary man.--Haggas, Carol Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
People have roots too, and many of us wither under stress. Wall found herself in a stage of life some might describe as pot-bound. With her children grown up and out of the house, herself frail and ill and with aging parents, she couldn't shake a constant feeling of dread and anxiety. That, and the worst-looking yard on her block, left her feeling wilted. Then she met Giles Owita, an immigrant from Kenya who was struggling to support his family in Roanoke, Va., by bagging groceries and doing yard work. Wall's life changed dramatically. So did her garden when Owita took over its care. Before long he was tending gardens all over the neighborhood. As they haggled about azaleas, an unlikely friendship began to bloom, and over its course Wall confronts startling moments of come-uppance. She learns that the man she assumed was an uneducated worker has a doctorate in horticulture from Virginia Tech and had been a college professor in his homeland. Yet, mysteriously, he has never been able to find academic employment in the United States. His wife, working as a nurse, has a Ph.D. in nutrition. You won't learn much about gardening in this beautiful book, though it seems Owita worked miracles on some unloved yards. But you will put Wall's memoir down with a new appreciation for how far roots can travel for nourishment, especially those that spring from our hearts.
Kirkus Review
Serendipitous life lessons from an unexpected source. Though she admittedly lacked the green thumb (or the inclination) necessary to beautify the environs of her home, 52-year-old Wall enlisted the aid of her neighbor's gifted Kenyan gardener. Giles Owita, an unassuming landscape artist outfitted with a "coiled energy" and a "navy work suit with bright white leather tennis shoes," not only beautified Wall's yard; their seemingly innocent relationship opened her eyes to international culture and nature ("Giles broke mecured meof my dread of flowers") and expanded her capacity for bliss. His arrival in her life was a timely one, as the author and her husband, Dick, had endured a year shaken by tragedy and illness. A breast cancer survivor, Wall had begun the heartbreaking ordeal of relocating her elderly parents to an assisted living facility, and her three children all suffered medical and developmental maladies. Throughout their many seasons together, Wall and Owita embarked on a cross-cultural exchange of histories, ideas, warm wisdom, respect and reinvigorating landscapes. Through her neighbor, the author discovered Owita's surprisingly extensive horticultural education and a series of mutual commonalities, including familial strife and a cancer diagnosis. The pair, along with Owita's wife, Bienta, grew ever closer within a unique friendship that Wall, in consistently articulate, affably crafted prose, compares to "a river that sometimes split into two separate streams, but always came back together again." Subtle changes began to transform Wall's outlook on life, and gradually, the author allowed herself to appreciate the grand spectacle of her lush backyard oasis. Owita not only performed an aesthetic miracle on Wall's property, but he also educated, enlivened and transformed her life and surroundings in graceful, heartwarming and rewarding ways. A pleasure to read. Wall's bittersweet story of human kindness has universal appeal.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected proof.*** Copyright © 2014 by Carol Wall Prologue I never liked getting my hands dirty. This was one reason that our yard looked so sad. But there were other reasons, too-- bigger reasons that were much harder to confront than brittle grass and overgrown bushes. It's not that I was ignoring our yard on purpose. Every once in a while we hired someone to plant or trim something. My husband, Dick, did his share of mowing. But he never did it happily. We weren't yard-proud the way some people are. And when the kids were young, there was always something more important than yard work to do. Going to one of their games or events, running them to school and lessons, or shepherding them to doctor appointments--all those things ranked way higher on our list of priorities. Once the kids were grown, I still managed to find more important things to do. I much preferred reading a book, or watching a documentary on TV, or going out to dinner with Dick to pruning a bush. I loved our house, and I enjoyed decorating the inside, but there was never anything about maintaining a house that I enjoyed. In some couples, one spouse makes up for the f laws of the other. But for better or worse, my beloved spouse and I shared the same f law in this department. Neither of us was handy. We ignored our loose front doorknob until it went from shaky to wobbly and finally fell off when we tried to exit the house one evening. Dick watched it fall to the hardwood floor with a thunk, then looked at me and said, "Time to move." I don't think we were entirely wrong in holding on to our low-intervention policy. Once when Dick and I were walking through town, we were stopped by a group of young women who were celebrating their friend's upcoming wedding. They were asking all the obviously married women they saw for advice for the new bride. I said, "You know, my life really began when I got married." They all laughed and told me that I was the first woman they'd stopped who hadn't said, "Don't do it." Then I told them that my best advice was not to approach marriage like it was an arrangement between property co-owners. It seemed to me like too many people spent too much of their time taking care of their houses instead of enjoying their spouses. And where was the fun in that? I liked to think that it was a valid philosophy of life that kept me out of the yard, and not just sheer laziness. In any case, to me, even worse than digging out a screwdriver to fix our doorknob would have been digging in the dirt. I had zero interest in that area of our property. I don't think I even really looked at it. Then one day, I noticed that our yard had slowly, gradually transformed itself. No longer could I f latter myself that it was natural and unmanicured because that was the aesthetic I preferred. No, our yard wasn't just rough around the edges. It had become a genuine embarrassment. Maybe we didn't have the worst yard on the block. But we were close to it, and one good mowing in our most neglectful neighbor's yard might easily nudge us into the bottom slot. And that just wouldn't do. I might never have been yard-proud, but I did not want to be yard-ashamed. So I decided that it was time to do something about this situation. It was a fixable problem, after all--and how nice it was to have one of those. When I passed our neighbor Sarah's yard I couldn't help seeing what an amazing job her gardener had done. Sarah was a master gardener herself, but recently she'd gotten busy at work and had brought in some help. And even I could tell that a true artist was at work there. Maybe I could hire her gardener, I thought to myself. And then our yard would be as beautiful as hers. It would be healthy and lush and well taken care of--just the way I wanted to be myself. A few days later I saw the mystery gardener in the flesh--the artist who'd wrought such a miracle transformation in my neighbor's yard--and it was kismet. Love at first sight. No, it wasn't the kind of love that causes you to question your marriage. It was the kind of love that causes you to question yourself. The kind that makes you want to be a better person. The kind that changes your life completely. His name was Giles Owita, and from the start, something f lowered between us and around us. First he became my gardener, and then he became my friend. And while I knew from the moment I met him that he was something special--truly, I didn't know the half of it. Excerpted from Mister Owita's Guide to Gardening: How I Learned the Unexpected Joy of a Green Thumb and an Open Heart by Carol Wall All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
Table of Contents
Prologue | p. 1 |
1 Garden Angel | p. 5 |
2 Of Particular Beauty Are the Azaleas | p. 13 |
3 A Rose Between Two Thorns | p. 21 |
4 A Promising Blade of Grass | p. 39 |
5 Anticipated Blooms | p. 67 |
6 Approaching Systems | p. 85 |
7 The Canopy of the Yukon Gold Potato | p. 91 |
8 Every Yard Must Have Its Flowers | p. 103 |
9 Shades of White | p. 113 |
10 The Perfect Christmas Tree | p. 123 |
11 Frail Magnolia | p. 137 |
12 Lemon | p. 149 |
13 A Pretty Sky | p. 167 |
14 Potted Plants and Fresh Flowers | p. 175 |
15 Green Plants, Only | p. 191 |
16 Impatiens | p. 201 |
17 Gardening Seminars | p. 211 |
18 Snow | p. 219 |
19 Tomato Plants | p. 231 |
20 Seedlings | p. 237 |
21 The River | p. 245 |
22 An Awkward Path | p. 255 |
23 The Lilies of the Field | p. 267 |
24 Rolling Waters | p. 273 |
25 All the Things He Loved | p. 281 |
Epilogue | p. 285 |
Author's Note | p. 289 |
Acknowledgments | p. 291 |