BETWEEN GARDENS: Observations on Gardening, Friendship and Disability

[Guest guest]

BETWEEN GARDENS: Observations on Gardening, Friendship and Disability

By Carol Graham Chudley and Dorothy Field

Polestar, 240 pp., $24.95

Slowly, insidiously worn down by Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Vancouver Island

potter Carol Graham Chudley nurtured her Vancouver Island garden all the

more devotedly. If she was going to lose her life -- which she eventually

did, in 1998 -- she would at least impart life elsewhere beforehand. With

her friend Dorothy Field, a weaver, she began a letter-writing

correspondence ostensibly about growing plants, but also about the spiritual

growth that comes with creativity.

''Writing this has smoothed out some of the noise in my head,'' writes

Field, in one entry. But the benefits of tending to a garden, or any form of

artistic expression, include a heightened outer awareness, too. In another

entry, she observes, ''I have been studying the architecture of Queen Anne's

lace. They grow like unfurling gothic cathedrals, complete with pointed

arches and flying buttresses. I continue to be amazed that I can walk past

something for years before I actually see it.''

Readers can actually see many of the women's plants for themselves, in

photographs so vivid that the dew on a hollyhock, for example, practically

drips off the page. The illustrations are alternately from slides, or

Polaroids transferred to paper handmade by Field. Between Gardens is well

worth cultivating.

- Chandler