If Eve had had a spade in Paradise and known what to do with it, we should not have had all that sad business of the apple.

Filled with flowers and forests, this lovely novella comes in the form of a diary written by an unabashed introvert and dreamer. This is the 6th novel I’ve read by Elizabeth von Arnim and I want to read them all. She’s such a kindred spirit.

While admiring my neighbour, I don't think I shall ever try to follow in her steps, my talents not being of the energetic and organising variety, but rather of that order which makes their owner almost lamentably prone to take up a volume of poetry and wander out to where the kingcups grow, and, sitting on a willow trunk beside a little stream, forget the very existence of everything but green pastures and still waters, and the glad blowing of the wind across the joyous fields.

The free ebook is available at gutenberg.org and in the Kindle store.

Originally published anonymously in 1898, Elizabeth von Armin (born Mary Annette Beauchamp) was the cousin of Katherine Mansfield who married a German Count and wasn't too enamoured with city life in Berlin, however once she discovered the rural home and garden her husband owned, she spent much of her time there, much to the chagrin of her husband, whom she affectionately refers to throughout the book as The Man of Wrath, and he referring to her as a woman with eccentricities.

This is no gardening book, the writer no gardener, someone who appreciates spending time in a rambling wilderness, appreciating what nature offers, reading her books, experimenting with plants and learning as each season passes, trying to keep a gardener, losing one to an asylum and a second to love.

Delightfully eccentric indeed.

The gardening bits were delightful but I wanted to smack the husband in the head with a shovel every time he opens his mouth.

Non è che le descrizioni del giardino nelle varie stagioni o le corse in slitta sulla neve, non mi siano piaciute e direi anche che certe pagine sono pure sottilmente umoristiche ma , francamente, in questi tempi leggere che la Signora ha come grande problema trovare le sementi giuste, il posto giusto delle rose e , soprattutto , avere un giardiniere che sia bravo e faccia tutto quello che vuole lei e come lo vuole lei .. a volte mi ha un po’ innervosito e creato un :
“...beata lei che non ha altri problemi..
Però se ci si ricorda quando è stato scritto e si è consapevoli di quello che si leggerà, beh , allora , può essere piacevole .
Personalmente ho apprezzato di più Un’estate in montagna, più reale .

Totally loved Elizabeth and her snarky, honest self. She wants to be left alone to enjoy her garden and her books. I can completely identify.

This is Elizabeth von Arnim's first book and I could tell because I've read other books by her and enjoyed them much more than this one. First, for me, the book was really hard to get into. Although it supposedly read like a diary, for me it really didn't, as I've read other "diary" type books that really drew me in immediately. Second, the descriptions of all the flowers and the garden were longish and slightly boring since I'm not into gardening, at all (I unfortunately kill everything!). I'm sure others will love this book because of all the pretty little flowers but not me.

Che piacevole lettura! Con uno stile narrativo elegante, una storia autobiografica fatta di leggerezza, ironia, sense of humor, studiata indolenza; nella quale non mancano le stoccate, gli sfoghi, le battute al vetriolo, una buona dose di critica delle convenzioni sociali, tre bambine deliziose, un marito decisamente irritante che trasuda maschilismo, da tutti i pori, un’amica eccentrica quanto Elizabeth, se non di più...e infine il suo meraviglioso giardino, un luogo rigenerante, un rifugio dell’anima, un progetto di vita, un conforto...

3.5

This book really needs a different title. Elizabeth and Her German Garden suggests that this is a traditional gardening memoir but it is only partly that. One part garden memoir, two parts memoir about a bad marriage and a desire to escape most people and society, in general. Elizabeth retreats to the outdoors whenever possible, usually into her garden, where she finds beauty, peace and solace. She spends full days out of doors, reading and spending time with her 3 children. A bonus, she escapes her husband, the aptly-named "Man of Wrath" about whom she writes with great wit.

As a gardener, I enjoy pouring over gorgeous garden catalogs trying to figure out what to plant this season or next. So it was very easy for me to get caught up in Elizabeth's lyrical descriptions of her plants and her dreams about what her garden might look like in the future.

Elizabeth was a great wit and I enjoyed her humorous quips and anecdotes immensely. But there were a few which rankled. These were about the house staff and guests. These remarks sometimes crossed the line from funny into demeaning. Nevertheless, I closed the book feeling mostly charmed by Elizabeth and her German garden.

n  ... and there were days last winter when I danced for sheer joy our in my frost-bound garder, in spite of my years and children. But I did it behind a bush, having a due regard for the decencies.n

I am kind of torn on this book. I found some parts of it really amusing - von Arnim can be really witty in some places reminiscent of the ways Jane Austen can be witty (while of course on a different level of mastery) and I liked that about this book. I also really enjoyed the gardening parts, even though the bits about gardeners were at the very least questionable.
The rest... there isn't much of a story and it contains some very weird social commentary - maybe attempt at feminism? I couldn't really tell, which is what is throwing me off, I guess. There is also an absolute lack of sensitivity towards the issues of class and immigration. I was uncomfortable with some parts... even though... some of them were also kind of unintentionally amusing.

My takeaway from this is that I'm glad I read it, because I think this author has a potential to yet enchant me, but for such a short book, I kind of prayed for this to end... I think I'm going to go for The Enchanted April next - as was recommended to me in the first place! I will listen next time...

I listened to this book through LibriVox and I honestly don't remember much about the recording, which means that it was probably fine... You can listen to it here for free: https://librivox.org/elizabeth-and-he...
Spoiler-free thread: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Spoiler thread: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

High society in the Third Reich reminds me of this book, that all should read. Elizabeth was an Englishwoman, really a New Zealand girl (a cousin of Kathryn Mansfield) who married a Prussian Junker and wrote this extremely droll, highly ironic book about how completely mad the German upper class really was and has always been. Everything she writes is beautiful - and her cousin Kathryn Mansfield shared her skill at delineating the oddity of German bourgeois manners by exact translation. Mansfield's story "German at Meat," which simply records the kind of polite remarks that respectable Germans at the end of the 19th century made during a pension dinner, is one of the funniest pieces of prose ever.
Another contemporary and acqaintance of these cousins who had the ability to peer into the German soul and reproduce its accents from within is D.H. Lawrence, who of course had a lovely object of study always close at hand: Frieda.
I feel very lucky to have grown up in a German-oriented neighborhood and University when I did, and have the desire to say to all my fellow Americans whose first "foreign language" is French, and ditto their first foreign literature:
"O, my frog-ridden American brothers and sisters! Germans are weird in really amusing and astonishing ways! And to live a life without trying to experience their peculiarity is a sad prospect!"
But how? How?

Elizabeth is the young wife of a minor Prussian nobleman whose estate in Northern Germany near the Baltic is the setting for the garden she is planning. Elizabeth is at her best and happiest in spring and summer, nominally overseeing the renovation of the her husband’s house, but in truth, reveling in long indolent days in the utter solitude of her garden--reading, dreaming, delighting in each new glory of the unfolding spring. She fills the house with lilacs and rejoices in fields of daisies and dandelions.

As an avid gardener myself, I thoroughly enjoyed Elizabeth’s long lyrical descriptions of trees and shrubs and wildflowers in bloom--they go on for pages and pages. When her children appear, they are charming and funny; three girls, all under the age of six and amusingly nicknamed April baby, May baby and June baby. The girls seem to share Elizabeth’s delight in the spring—or at least they don’t detract from it too much since, thankfully, there is plenty of money for nursemaids and other staff. From time to time her husband, dubbed the Man of Wrath, makes an appearance, putting a damper on things but doing little to earn his moniker.

"It is less a garden than a wilderness....in the middle of this plain is the oasis of bird-cherries and greenery where I spend my happy days...."



"During those six weeks I lived in a world of dandelions and delights."



But in the midst of this idyll, Elizabeth seems possessed of a strange restlessness, tearing off to England in one chapter, and in another, making an odd excursion to her ancestral home, now owned by cousins with whom she has quarreled. Here she wanders through the family gardens, terrified lest a relative emerge to find her trespassing. In flashbacks we glimpse her as a solitary child, meet her stern grandfather and equally stern, but more beloved, father. The whole is enlivened by Elizabeth’s sharp wit and sense of the ridiculous: her grandfather, on the death of his wife, comforts himself by developing a new potato variety which he names, Consolation in Grief.

Alas, winter is inevitable, especially in the north of Germany, and Elizabeth in winter is a different creature altogether. I found the months spent in her snowbound house a vaguely claustrophobic experience. Elizabeth and her friend Irais amuse themselves by casting serious shade on another guest of house, an utterly clueless English art student named Minora.

The hapless Minora is also writing a book: '“Oh, I thought of calling it Journeyings in Germany. It sounds well, and would be correct. Or Jottings from German Journeyings--I haven't quite decided yet...”

“By the author of Prowls in Pomerania...,” suggested Irais.

“And Drivel from Dresden,” said I.’

Some weeks later Minora, perhaps under the influence of too much Glühwein, proposed 'to teach us a dance called, I think, the Washington Post....We remained untouched by its beauties, each buried in an easy-chair toasting our toes at the fire. Amongst those toes were those of the Man of Wrath, who sat peaceably reading a book and smoking...."Do let me teach you. Won't you try, Herr Sage?....Oh come, put away that tiresome old book,” she went on gaily...’ This occasions The Man of Wrath to pontificate for pages and pages about the foibles of women. By the end of January, I was heartily sick of the whole lot of them.

I found the feminist musings tiresome, the insights into Prussian culture fascinating, but my favorite part will always be Elizabeth’s glorious garden in springtime.

Buddy read with Tadiana, Jeannette and Carolien. Special thanks to Tadiana for serving as our German translator. Recommended by Karlyne Landrum and Jane Steen

Легкая, приятная книга, а с хорошей озвучкой слушается супер быстро на фоне. Ее и нужно читать молниеносно, иначе потеряется искорка этих обрывочных зарисовок. Сложно оценивать ее как полноценную, потому что это просто небольшие зарисовки жизни главной героини в Германии в окружении ее дома, сада, трех дочерей и мужа. Некоторые главы очень летние и, прости господи, вкусные с обширным описанием красок, запахов и звуков. Но мне не очень понравились рассуждения о правах женщин, особенно со стороны патриархального мужчины, как будто это чужеродный элемент в сюжете. А вот отрывки с детьми очень смешные и милые.