Green Neighbors: Turn-of-the-(last) Century Gardening

By Ron Sullivan

Joe gave me an antique garden book as a 36th anniversary present. A true antique, over a century old: The Garden Book of California, by Belle Sumner Angier, 1906, Paul Elder and Company. It does not have an ISBN number, nor does the publisher’s address have a ZIP code. Last month I read, somewhere, a question regarding an heirloom watch that was having battery trouble. Heirloom watches have batteries? This Ain’t Right, the way It Ain’t Right to walk into an antique shop and see a display of LPs that you remember having sex to. The book does have a few uncut pages, which are a truly tantalizing dilemma: Do I preserve the antique value by leaving them uncut, or do I screw up the soft deckled margin by inexpertly cutting them? Read more>