What I'm Reading Now

I recently finished reading Back from the Land: How Young Americans Went to Nature in the 1970s, and Why They Came Back, by Eleanor Agnew, copyright 2005.  It was an interesting mix of Agnew's account of her own participation in the back-to-the-land-and-back-again movement, with bits and pieces of the stories of other 1970s homesteaders.  I enjoyed the stories but found her attitude toward back to the landers annoying.  She conveys them as a bunch of young, shallow idealists who really had no forethought about the conditions they might encounter, or the philosophical or political commitments that many of them had.  Given that Agnew didn't seem to have much of a commitment to going back to the land in the first place, beyond wanting to escape her boring job,  it's not surprising that the hardships that accompany living close to the land on little money drove her back to what she calls civilization.
I've handed the book on to my mother to read; since she and my dad participated in the movement and had lots of friends also involved, I'm interested in what her take on it will be.   

I'm fascinated by other kids who grew up, as I did, with parents who homesteaded and were part of the counterculture.  I've just started reading Split: A Counterculture Childhood, by Lisa Michaels (copyright 1998).  I've actually read this once before, just as I had Back from the Land.  I'm impressed by Michaels' writing style, and her story of growing up while moving from one parent to the other during the 1970s is pretty interesting.  She does not focus as much on the homesteading aspects of the counterculture movement so it's not as useful for getting a sense of that piece of history. However, she does seem to have a better attitude toward members of the counterculture and a deeper appreciation of the reasons that some of them chose to live the kinds of lives they did.


I'm also browsing through The Organic Gardener by  Catharine Osgood Foster.  This is a useful volume with lots of practical advice about gardening without the use of pesticides and with an appreciation of the ways that the gardener can use the resources of the natural world to sustain a healthy habitat in one's garden.  I particularly like the opening sections in which she describes simple experiments that beginning gardeners can do to learn about the growth processes of plants, prior to taking on the more sophisticated tasks of managing an actual garden. 

On another note:  we spent the weekend in Virginia.  Yesterday was a heart-breakingly beautiful day.


We spent the day outside, meandering through the fields and dawdling down by the stream.  We added to our tick collection: I found one that was considering an attachment behind my right ear and another that was crawling up by the neckline of my shirt.  I found one that had burrowed down into S's fur and which had already attached itself to his front leg.

I found a lovely, rusty old sewing machine in the stream.  It blended in so perfectly with the colors of the rocks and water that I almost didn't see it.

Yesterday evening and today, rain, at last.  This has been the driest spring I can remember.  All the critters came out to play.  I found lots of snails and slugs.  The Wikipedia gods informed me that snails are hatched from eggs and born with little teeny shells. 

Afterthought:  my marigold seeds have sprouted :)