On my lengthy train ride home I became so lost in it, so utterly engrossed in the wondrous life this tiny, grey-haired woman has carved out for herself, that I might as well have slept and been dreaming all the way home.
The two people who created this book, Tovah Martin of Logee's Greenhouses and photographer Richard W. Brown know Tasha Tudor well and it shows. They are both frequent visitors to her other-century existence in Vermont, so it's not just a book ABOUT her, they both share their wonder and fondness for her with all of us. Most of us know of Tasha Tudor from her wondrous children's book illustrations of gardens and flowers and children and corgi dogs.
Her house was built by her son to look just like a 1740's farmhouse she once admired in New Hampshire and it was all done with hand tools. As of 1994 when the book was published, she'd been working the gardens on her 250 acre piece of land for 21 years.
There are many things about this woman and this book that struck me, but the most profound was WHY all this garden glory exists -- for the pure and exquisite love of it. At once both the consummate artist and the consummate yankee, Tasha Tudor delights in both the practical uses of her beloved plants and in the ecstatic frivolity of just FILLING her house with bouquets, surrounding herself with the flowers she loves so and capturing them in paintings. This is enchantment of the HIGHEST order. And she lives it completely.
So this is why Tasha Tudor has my vote for a Woman of Herstory. She embodies all that IS a woman and her surroundings. She works really hard, does ALL her own weeding (although well into her 80's and at a grand 95 lbs she will accept hole-digging or compost-hauling help from her devoted friends and family), she takes incredible delight in SHARING all this wonderfulness both in illustrations and in just plain FEEDING everyone who walks in, as well as in her storytelling. She raises fan-tail pigeons and all kinds of chickens and nubian goats and of course her trademark Corgyn. (that's another thing I learned, Corgyn is the plural of those dear little fox-colored Corgi dogs who follow her around and steal pears and potatoes whenever they can run off with them).
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