He Sowed She Sewed

I am in the process of reading “The Secret Garden” by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

It is one of those books where you know how it goes so I have never read it before.  I saw the movie when I was a little girl and left it at that.

 I was browsing kindle books and found that this little gem was free.  What the heck, right?  Might as well give it a whirl.  I never would have gone out to buy this book or probably checked it out at the library.  But I am SO glad that I am reading it right now.

It would be hard to read in the middle of winter but it extremely fun to read in the spring.  Mary is so passionate about gardening and is beside herself when the seemingly dead earth begins to come to life.  I am about half way through the book and can feel myself getting the itch to garden and make things beautiful.  Here are some of my favorite passages thus far,

I love this first one because she feels herself being awakened-

“Living as it were, all by herself in a house with a hundred mysteriously closed rooms and having nothing whatever to do to amuse herself, had set her inactive brain to working and was actually awakening her imagination. There is no doubt that the fresh, strong, pure air from the moor had a great deal to do with it.  Just as it had given her an appetite, and fighting with the wind had stirred her mind.  In India she had always been too hot and languid and weak to care much about anything, but in this place she was beginning to care and to want to do new things.  Already she felt less ‘contrary,’ though she did not know why.”

This next one makes smile and want to garden:

“I’m getting stronger.  I used to always be tired.  When I dig I’m not tired at all.  I like to smell the earth when it’s turned up.”

And lastly,

“Might I, quavered Mary, might I have a bit of earth?  In her eagerness she did not realize how queer the words would sound and that they were not the ones she had meant to say.  mr Craven looked quite startled.  ‘Earth!’ he repeated, ‘What do you mean?’  To plant seeds in–to make things grow–to see them come alive,’ Mary faltered.”

How rewarding it is so make things grow.  To make tiny little seeds blossom into giant sunflowers or into delicious vegetables.  Out of the earth.  What a wonderful and miraculous event that happens every spring.  It will never cease to amaze me.