Onward and Upward

"Hey, Nick Eddy!  You can be all high and mighty all day about why other blogs suck - you know, the ones people actually read - but then you want to bore your scant readership with talking about what garden books you're reading!  What gives?"

First off - fuck that attitude, made-up interlocutioner!  Second: this time, I'll do you one or more better by saying the "garden book" I'm reading is (thus far) mostly the writer reviewing/dissecting/nattering on about garden catalogs and their charms.  Yep, it's Onward and Upward in the Garden, by Katherine White of New Yorker fame.  So there.

But, see, if I hadn't ordered this tome (a collection of her post-retirement New Yorker gardening articles they must have been fucking thrilled to rush to print) I would have missed this insanity of asteriskness (that only I will care about, you can be sure of that):

A stylist of another sort is nearer home - the sage of White Flower Farm, in Litchfield, Connecticut, who signs his writings "Amos Pettingill." I have no idea whether Amos Pettingill is a real person -  the name sounds like an ill-advised fabrication - but, real or false, someone is int here pitching who edits a lively catalogue and writes in a highly distinctive style.*

The asterisk, provided by her husband EB White, who edited this book:

* She soon found out  "Amos Pettingill" was William Harris, husband of Jane Grant, who was the first wife of [New Yorker founder] Harold Ross.  A small world.

Really?  That's hella small.  How small and intimate the literary world was then!  Although I suppose it's roughly the equivalent of my seeing one of my followers at Chipotle.