Health

I find myself often looking for ways to bridge the gap between literature and daily life, between the vivid world of Victorian fiction and the often prosaic realities of lived experience.   One of the reasons that I am drawn to Morris’s work is because his writings are so deeply invested in the materiality of day-to-day living.   Accordingly, when, last summer, I became the owner of a new-to-me but old home in the Philadelphia suburbs, I found myself turning to Morris for inspiration and advice, particularly with regards to the garden.   The home came to us with three dead shrubs, an expanse of weed-filled dirt, and little else by way of landscaping.   I have never had occasion to design, plant, or tend a garden before (city living = potted plants), and of all the many projects that need to be done, the one I have found perhaps most daunting is the project of creating a garden from scratch.  Discussions of Morris’s environmentalism have, quite rightly, most often focused on connection