Port Clyde author writes book about gardening during the pandemic

July 9, 2024

In her new book, “A Gardener at the End of the World,” Margot Anne Kelley takes the reader into her world for an entire year at the beginning of the 2020 pandemic.

It begins with the words: “We linger in the long now, the moment stretches tighter and thinner, while promises that it will end keep spreading beyond the gloomy horizon. Only the seasons hold on to the old order; I measure time by the larch.”

Kelley lives in Port Clyde. She is a writer, photographer, and nature lover. Her most recent book, Foodtopia, was a finalist for the Maine Literary Award in the nonfiction category. Kelley was also the editor of The Maine Review.

In March 2020, the COVID pandemic hits and life begins to rapidly spiral into the surreal. Kelly immerses herself in her garden, learning all about what’s happening “out there.” She shares what she’s learned – historic milestones in the era when viruses reshaped the world – and she talks to and about plants and viruses, torn by the many emotions, thoughts and feelings that affect everyone as she focuses on caring for tomato seedlings in her greenhouse and more.

“One hundred and forty million years of evolution have given seeds the ability to ride out uncertain conditions and recognize when the world is inviting. I now take my cues from them.”

As June approaches, comes the realization that “we live in an ever-changing landscape.” Kelley captures the visual splendor of color in her and her neighbors’ yard. Distance is now real, and the pandemic rages, leaving behind loss amid confusion.

“Given the bleakness of the rest of the world, it feels almost incongruous to be surrounded by such lush beauty. The pandemic has not let up at all; as of yesterday, there were over 6.7 million cases and nearly four hundred thousand deaths. And protests following the killing of George Floyd are growing.”

September will be about executing what Kelley’s town has been working on all summer: bringing back some of the way things used to be. That meant sending the kids back to school. Kelley’s thoughts wander from the larch tree at the edge of her yard to Dr. Anthony Fauci, food supplies, plum trees, Christopher Columbus, COVID-19 cases, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and finally, her tomatoes starting to ripen.

“For me, preserving food from the garden is a pleasure that has an ironic flavor. For most of my life, first as a student and then as a professor, my year was dictated by the academic calendar. It began not in January but in September. When I started growing food, I thought it would reconnect me with the annual calendar and seasonality. And it does. But like buying seeds in the middle of winter, preserving food takes me out of obvious alignment with the season. Instead of spending beautiful early fall days outdoors, I’m indoors preparing for winter.”

December arrives, bringing with it hope and poetry. As everything that was once colorful and bright becomes monotonous in her garden and landscape, Kelley tries to stay positive in the face of diminishing sunlight. The only plants left in her garden are the carrots she planted. And because of their diverse varieties, she expects a rainbow of colors as the garden falls into hibernation.

“After finishing up the garden for this year, I’ve been leaning heavily on poetry to sustain me. In last week’s New Yorker, Brenda Hillman published a beautiful short poem called ‘Winter Song for a Sufferer.’ It feels so fitting at this moment that I’ve copied out a few lines and taped them to the wall so I can read them when I need them: ‘A soul may cower for a long time while the heart stretches to reach its edges.’

Yes, it can.”

Many books have been written during and about the 2020 pandemic, from fiction to short stories, science-based and historical commentaries, and emotionally charged treatises on what people felt, endured, and lost during that terrible time. Kelley’s book is their reflection, using her own words and those of others with intelligence, respect, and poetic embrace to tell her story, a story that gripped me from the first page.

A Gardener at the End of the World is both a diary and a memoir of a time made brutally real by the increasingly cramped living conditions Kelley experienced. It is a necessary and essential read if one wants to understand the cruel hardships that come with the beauty that this “plant” called life carries within it, and which, like any seed, if properly nurtured, grows and eventually returns, giving back what it has been given.

A gardener at the end of the world
Margot Anne Kelley
David R. Godine Publishers, 2024 Hardcover 28,95 €