Botanical Book Club
The Santa Fe Botanical Garden is active. They organize lots of workshops, gatherings and events throughout the year. They have a nicely stocked botanical library and run a monthly book club. Recently I decided to go to my first Santa Fe book club meeting.
I miss my old garden book group -- the good friends, the books we read and the easy sharing of garden experience and gossip. I hoped I could find something similar. I was pleased to see the book selections here were exactly what my old group was reading.
You don't join this book club, you just show up at a small meeting room in the education center building. It's a fluid group of people who come each time. At the first meeting I went to, four of us were first timers and five were repeat attendees. There were eight women, including me, and one man. Plus the director of education for the botanical garden, who organizes the whole thing.
All the women were 70+ years of age, and all were highly educated. They wore their intellects the way they wore their silver jewelry, heavily and obviously but very, very tastefully. They knew their horticulture and they had a lot to offer. There were no garden neophytes in the room, these were people who know plants. The discussion was free flowing and really interesting -- I enjoyed it.
The man in the group was a wiry youngish farmer with a long black pony tail, an Oklahoma twang, and good ole boy manners. He was an odd counterpoint to the upper class silvered ladies of the club, but they welcomed him and engaged him and had a great discussion with him about the qualities of wind howling on the plains compared to wind blowing in northern New Mexico. He seemed happy to be in the group and he had read the book.
This being Santa Fe, each of the ladies was a little offbeat too. Just slightly. Caroline hadn't really focused on the book because of Proust. You know, Proust. He gets in the way when you are reading and occupies your time too much.
Victoria, who runs a garden design business, went on a bit of a riff about her clients, and how her dance training and theater work helped her design their gardens. Yes, this is Santa Fe.
Candace was quiet but offered the observation that trees are migrating northward more and more as warming winters change their habitats, and eventually all our trees will be in Canada "safely escaped from Trump". Nods and murmurs around the whole room. Santa Fe is liberal.
Barbara writes a plant of the month article for the botanical garden newsletter, and was coming up empty on how to make lichens romantic enough for the Valentine's Day issue. The talk eventually got into how lichens aren't even plants anyway, they're a fungus / algae combo and then she stunned us all with her description of a strip of glistening moss in a patch of lichens after a dusting of snow revived its emerald green softness. It was lovely.
I like the book club. We had a good discussion about the book and wandered into other topics too, especially environmental issues that a fragile ecology in the southwest faces. Everyone was friendly but not overbearing, well informed but not know-it-all --- well within my narrow New Englander's tolerance for other people.
I'm planning to go back next month.
I miss my old garden book group -- the good friends, the books we read and the easy sharing of garden experience and gossip. I hoped I could find something similar. I was pleased to see the book selections here were exactly what my old group was reading.
You don't join this book club, you just show up at a small meeting room in the education center building. It's a fluid group of people who come each time. At the first meeting I went to, four of us were first timers and five were repeat attendees. There were eight women, including me, and one man. Plus the director of education for the botanical garden, who organizes the whole thing.
All the women were 70+ years of age, and all were highly educated. They wore their intellects the way they wore their silver jewelry, heavily and obviously but very, very tastefully. They knew their horticulture and they had a lot to offer. There were no garden neophytes in the room, these were people who know plants. The discussion was free flowing and really interesting -- I enjoyed it.
The man in the group was a wiry youngish farmer with a long black pony tail, an Oklahoma twang, and good ole boy manners. He was an odd counterpoint to the upper class silvered ladies of the club, but they welcomed him and engaged him and had a great discussion with him about the qualities of wind howling on the plains compared to wind blowing in northern New Mexico. He seemed happy to be in the group and he had read the book.
This being Santa Fe, each of the ladies was a little offbeat too. Just slightly. Caroline hadn't really focused on the book because of Proust. You know, Proust. He gets in the way when you are reading and occupies your time too much.
Victoria, who runs a garden design business, went on a bit of a riff about her clients, and how her dance training and theater work helped her design their gardens. Yes, this is Santa Fe.
Candace was quiet but offered the observation that trees are migrating northward more and more as warming winters change their habitats, and eventually all our trees will be in Canada "safely escaped from Trump". Nods and murmurs around the whole room. Santa Fe is liberal.
Barbara writes a plant of the month article for the botanical garden newsletter, and was coming up empty on how to make lichens romantic enough for the Valentine's Day issue. The talk eventually got into how lichens aren't even plants anyway, they're a fungus / algae combo and then she stunned us all with her description of a strip of glistening moss in a patch of lichens after a dusting of snow revived its emerald green softness. It was lovely.
I like the book club. We had a good discussion about the book and wandered into other topics too, especially environmental issues that a fragile ecology in the southwest faces. Everyone was friendly but not overbearing, well informed but not know-it-all --- well within my narrow New Englander's tolerance for other people.
I'm planning to go back next month.
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