Dean Riddle's Beautiful Life Story

What's your vision of a beautiful life?

What if, in the moment before you're given earthly existence, the Creator has a little sit-down with you to show you what's in store (...after which, of course, you're conveniently zapped with that memory eraser thing from MiB).

Let's say that this is what you're shown: You'll grow up in a small town in the American South. You'll be male, and you'll be gay. You'll have a loving family, with a mother that you'll call "Mama" and a father that you'll call "Daddy" even after they've long since passed on. You'll have the chance to meet many people, although you will nurse through final illness many of those that you've come to love the most. You'll have the chance to live in many places, although you won't find the place that feels like your true home until you're into your thirties. From the day of your earliest memory, and perhaps every day thereafter, you will notice, remember and love gardens, plants and flowers.

In Out in the Garden: Growing a Beautiful Life (ISBN & other details at the bottom of this earlier post), Dean Riddle unfolds for us his happy life, echoed in the beauty of the gardens he's created at his home in the Catskills in upstate New York. It's an artful autobiography, as it avoids the diaristic "...and then...and then...and then" litany of name-dropping reminiscences (such as found in bestsellers spawned by big publishing advances and armies of ghostwriters); it's an artful autobiography because it paints a picture with carefully selected stories of people, places and experiences, each meaningfully making a point which might otherwise come off as aphoristic but for being heartfully lived and true: Money doesn't buy happiness. Happiness is not the absence of pain. Life is short. Death is part of life. Life is beautiful.

I'm in awe of Dean Riddle's plantsmanship--the gardening knowledge in this book alone would make this a worthwhile read--but that's for another post. For now, I just want to appreciate his appreciation, throughout the book, of the loved ones that have gone before him and whom he remembers, evocatively and generously. His "Granny", with forgiveness. His "Mama" and "Daddy", with love and heartfelt loss. "Mick", a fellow student at Hillier Nurseries in England, killed young in an electrical accident. "Sonny", who grew Comtesse de Bouchard clematis and left Riddle his copy of Hortus Third. "Courtney", who dies of AIDS the day after Tom Hanks' Oscar win for Philadelphia. "Mark", who, a short time before dying at twenty-nine, tells Riddle, "Maybe someday I'll be able to see you and your flowers when I move on to the great beyond."

I love this book. I think you will too.

Comments

[avril]

just discovered your blog and am busy devouring your archives......absolutely adored this book. A gay man who gardens and writes with humor and love~what more could a girl ask for in a read?

[Bookish Gardener]

I'm with you. I am so fond of this book. It says such important things with such beautiful modesty. Just thinking about it makes me want to re-read it yet again.

[barbara]

I soaked up this book and could practically smell the earth. His feelings for soil so match my own. Dean Riddle's voice is wonderful; he becomes a friend. For its many insights into the meaning of life OUT IN THE GARDEN is a marvel.