Youth Literary | "Island Garden": a garden, an unfinished legend

Author: [Beauty] Celia Leiden Saxte by / [ Beauty ] Child Hassam Painted

Translator : Zhou Wenhan / Tang Zehui

Publisher : CITIC Publishing Group

Published : 2021-10

Number of pages : 272

Price : 69.00 CNY

Binding : Hardcover

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Text/Xia Li Lemon

Editor/Su Xiaoqing

"When an island in the physical sense is inhabited, it enters the narrative of 'civilization'. A lonely island that was not well known, entered literary history because of a woman writer, poet and horticulturist, became a cultural landscape that attracted generations of readers and readers. ”

This passage is quoted from "The Garden on the Island" by the American female writer Celia Leiden Saxte. The small island mentioned is Appledor Island, now located in the U.S. state of Maine. It is the largest in the Shoals Islands. Born in 1835, Celia is the island's unique heroine.

Throughout the book, it depicts not only the fate of a small island, a garden and a female writer, how they are intertwined in everything on the island, but also how people who lived more than a hundred years ago coexisted with nature and joined hands to pursue the light of those lives. In Celia's pen, the joy and love born of horticultural life are like spring streams, wrapped in the fragrance of wildflowers, slowly infiltrating the reader's heart, warm and healing.

Island of Freedom

Appledor Island covers an area of 95 acres, or about 39 hectares, which is the size of a medium-sized park. The highest point on the island is only 20 meters, a bit like a bulging pig's back, also known as "Wild Boar Island".

After hundreds of millions of years of sea breeze, sunshine, rain and snow, seabirds have some activity, tenacious green plants have grown, and there is a little bit of a small island, followed by native Americans carrying prehistoric arrows and spears to the island.

With the advent of the Age of Discovery in the 15th and 17th centuries, fishermen from nearby islands slowly migrated to the island with their families, making a living from fishing and farming, including those who made their way. In the middle of the 17th century, there were hundreds of people living on Wild Boar Island, forming a small town: Appledor. Later, due to taxes and wars, the residents of the town moved away.

In fact, due to the lack of fresh water, Wild Boar Island is not suitable for long-term settlement by humans. But perhaps because of its location, or because of its inaccessible proximity, the island's natural beauty is fascinating, like a paradise of vegetation and birds.

Celia once said, "For as long as I can remember, the flowers have been like my dear friends, giving me comfort, giving me soul, giving me strength, cheering me up and being happy." ”

On this island of freedom, she must have a garden of her own.

Eternal garden

Celia's father, Thomas Layton, came from a famous family and had some assets in his ancestry. In October 1839, Celia's father accepted the appointment of the island lighthouse administrator because of his unsuccessful bid for governor. Celia, 4, followed her parents and her family to an island that looked almost like a large reef protruding from the sea. There is no food to grow here, no fresh water, and all supplies are replenished by weekly supply ships. They are the only inhabitants of the island. At the same time, Layton partnered with his brother-in-law to buy Wild Boar Island and several small islands around it, intending to start a fishing and shipping industry.

Celia, who lives on the Isle of Wight, is lonely, with only two little friends. Later, she concluded: The first thing I learned in my life was to live as independently as possible. This played a decisive role in guiding her later life as a poet and horticulture. She has owned her own small gardens on the Isle of Wight, Dirty Nose and Wild Boar Island.

The "Island Garden" in the book is a small garden she built outside her summer house on Appledor Island after marrying and having children, 50 feet long and 15 feet wide.

Celia believes that the love of flowers is innate, and therefore the gardener is also born. As we all know, gardeners are a chore, and they have to work in the garden without complaint or regret to reap the rewards. I remember that the British horticulturist Derek Jarman wrote most in the two diaries of "Modern Nature" and "Slowly Smiling" that sowing seeds, fertilizing, weeding, and catching insects in the garden, even in the last days of life, dragging heavy sick bodies, never stopped.

Love is the secret of raising flowers

It all starts with the loneliness and joy of a little girl.

For as far as Celia can remember, flowers have been like her dear friends, giving her comfort, inspiration and strength, cheering her up and delighting her. In Celia's eyes, every grass sprout that emerged from the ground, even the most inconspicuous weed, was precious.

Before she was 5 years old, Celia's father left his daughter a "corner of the garden" that covered less than a square meter to grow her favorite calendula. As a child, she would curiously look at the seedlings with sharp horns exposed from the shell, and would sit on the ground and hold a small handful of soil, feeling the nutrients and strength hidden in this dry, rough powder.

All the seeds will touch celia's inner softness, a miracle that is taking place in a tiny life. The seeds of dandelions and thistles have wings attached to them, and they will fly and scatter every breeze blowing through them; the shells of maple trees are like oars, which can paddle in the invisible tide in the air. The miracles of the seeds often make Celia stop and indulge, sometimes forgetting her way home.

The birds by the garden are also the friends Celia tries to make. At first, the birds had the audacity to rush to Celia and make a low, unhappy cry in their throats, warning Celia not to go near their little home under their eaves. But after a few days they discover that Celia is a harmless creature, they will calmly deal with it, courting, whispering, nagging, calling under the eaves, making musical chirps to soothe Celia's lonely heart.

Year after year, the island's gardens become more and more beautiful and full of charm. After summer, many strangers and friends pleaded with Celia: "How did you make your plants flourish so much?" I'll never be able to make my plants bloom like this! What's your secret? "

Celia's answer was only one word: "Love." ”

Love means everything: patience in the face of constant trials, perseverance for a long time, the strength to give up the momentary ease of mind and body and take care of the beloved things as necessary.

Celia's friend said that when she sat in the shade of the corridor, the carefully tended wisteria vines would lean toward him and rest their heads on his shoulders. When we give our whole heart and soul to the plant, the plant will come back in the same way. Nature gives us the purest happiness, which is quiet and innocent and requires patience and love to feel.

Reading Celia's horticultural life, I will be moved by her delicate mind and light brushstrokes. In Celia's eyes, all life is a beautiful elf, even a seed that has not yet been sown. And these little seeds, with the help of dirt, dew, sunshine, showers and fragrant air, harvest everything she needs. Celia said: "It is not the credit of the gardener, but the gift of nature, the fraternity." ”

Celia was in the garden, fighting pests and weeds endlessly, but she didn't feel tired at all, she said, giving love is a kind of enjoyment, as if she were in heaven. Being in a garden, like "immersed in wonder, love, and praise," is eternity.

Immortal island poet

Celia lived in an era where women wrote, very rarely. Celia was one of the most famous female poetesses in New England or the United States at the time, and she was influenced by Emerson and Hawthorne, along with Louisa May Olcott, the author of Little Women of the same period, who was a regular visitor to the gardens of Celia Island. Emily Dickinson, a poet who also loved flowers and trees, was still unknown at the time.

In 1861, Celia's poem praising the natural style of the island was sent to the Atlantic Monthly by a friend, and it was immediately hit. Since then, she has embarked on the path of natural literature creation of poetry and prose. However, Celia lives in seclusion in the island garden, writing about the island's natural time, which becomes her main way of life. In addition to publishing good works in a row, she also painted Chinese paintings on porcelain. To this day, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York still houses her painted pottery.

After her husband's death, Celia spent most of her time on the quiet island, enjoying conversations with the island, the sea, the sky, plants and animals, until her death in 1894 at home on the island. Her good friend, Child Hassam, the illustrator of the paintings included in the book, prepared a bay-shaped bed for her to place her body. My friend remembered what Celia had said, "I can never put my heart on anything that doesn't belong to the sea." ”

Although a fire engulfed every blooming flower and every newly planted seed on the island shortly after Celia's death, The Garden on the Island shows us a possible way of life where beauty and happiness can be sought.

As the poet Rumi once wrote in his poem: "Beyond right and wrong, there is a field, where I am waiting for you." "More than a hundred years may change a lot of things, but the idea of a better life still exists in the depths of each of us.