The weather is getting hotter, plants are blossoming all over the place, and I'm really pleased with how big my vines are getting.
Maintaining this blog is a bit of a challenge because the simple fact that gardening is a slow hobby, one of small degrees. The drama unfolds bit by bit before your eyes, and so from day to day there are few changes to report. The plants grow. You give them water, you give them sun. They get bigger, bit by bit. Essentially it's always the same story. And for the gardener, that is, for me, this small and somewhat predictable drama is still perfectly thrilling. But trying to write about it is a completely different thing. So my challenge is to find a way to use this writing as an arena for exploration and discovery, looking to cultural practices here that might be different than my own, to local flora and fauna that are unusual to me, and to thought-provoking textual sources.
Today I started reading the 1920 fourth edition of Gollan's Indian Vegetable Garden, an early 20th century colonial treatise for the British home gardener in India. It was edited by horticulturist Norman Gill (1878-1924), a "genial Cornishman" (Briscoe 1920:494) who was apparently responsible for introducing avocado cultivation in India. This effort alone makes me respect and admire him, even if the avocado somehow didn't catch on in the subcontinent. It seems that Gill made quite a variety of contributions to botany and horticulture and yet because he didn't publish much in academic journals he is now largely forgotten; a lesson to all of us would-be scientists. Shah (1996) describes in glowing terms his efforts to promote the cultivation of plants as varied as strawberries and belladonna.
Anyway, I look forward to reading Gollan's; so far even the front matter and advertisements for other books are interesting from a social history standpoint, e.g. the ad for The Indian Cookery Book, available numbered in English and Urdu editions so that "The Housekeeper who cannot read Urdu has only to turn up the number wanted and hand it to the cook who can either read it or get it read to him" (how convenient!). I'm sure there will be many more such gems of colonial life to come in the actual text. There are so many interesting questions that rise up out of a text like this one: who was the audience of this book? Who was actually doing the chores and tasks of gardening? What was at stake for the British colonial powers in promoting vegetable gardening and Western-style agricultural science in India? How do imperialist ideologies permeate even something as mundane as growing a cucumber? Because I am certain that they can and do.
More to come.
REFERENCES
Bricoe, T.W.
1920 "Two Years' Sojourn in India." The Journal of the Kew Guild 3(27):493-495.
Shah, N.C.
1996 "Norman Gill--The Pioneer Horticulturist of the Hills of Uttar Pradesh--A Tribute." Indian Journal of the History of Science 31(4):383-390.
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| The current setup |
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| Okra flower |
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| Bitter melon flowers |
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| A baby okra! |
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| The zinnias I planted are going to bloom...finally a flower success! |
Maintaining this blog is a bit of a challenge because the simple fact that gardening is a slow hobby, one of small degrees. The drama unfolds bit by bit before your eyes, and so from day to day there are few changes to report. The plants grow. You give them water, you give them sun. They get bigger, bit by bit. Essentially it's always the same story. And for the gardener, that is, for me, this small and somewhat predictable drama is still perfectly thrilling. But trying to write about it is a completely different thing. So my challenge is to find a way to use this writing as an arena for exploration and discovery, looking to cultural practices here that might be different than my own, to local flora and fauna that are unusual to me, and to thought-provoking textual sources.
Today I started reading the 1920 fourth edition of Gollan's Indian Vegetable Garden, an early 20th century colonial treatise for the British home gardener in India. It was edited by horticulturist Norman Gill (1878-1924), a "genial Cornishman" (Briscoe 1920:494) who was apparently responsible for introducing avocado cultivation in India. This effort alone makes me respect and admire him, even if the avocado somehow didn't catch on in the subcontinent. It seems that Gill made quite a variety of contributions to botany and horticulture and yet because he didn't publish much in academic journals he is now largely forgotten; a lesson to all of us would-be scientists. Shah (1996) describes in glowing terms his efforts to promote the cultivation of plants as varied as strawberries and belladonna.
Anyway, I look forward to reading Gollan's; so far even the front matter and advertisements for other books are interesting from a social history standpoint, e.g. the ad for The Indian Cookery Book, available numbered in English and Urdu editions so that "The Housekeeper who cannot read Urdu has only to turn up the number wanted and hand it to the cook who can either read it or get it read to him" (how convenient!). I'm sure there will be many more such gems of colonial life to come in the actual text. There are so many interesting questions that rise up out of a text like this one: who was the audience of this book? Who was actually doing the chores and tasks of gardening? What was at stake for the British colonial powers in promoting vegetable gardening and Western-style agricultural science in India? How do imperialist ideologies permeate even something as mundane as growing a cucumber? Because I am certain that they can and do.
More to come.
REFERENCES
Bricoe, T.W.
1920 "Two Years' Sojourn in India." The Journal of the Kew Guild 3(27):493-495.
Shah, N.C.
1996 "Norman Gill--The Pioneer Horticulturist of the Hills of Uttar Pradesh--A Tribute." Indian Journal of the History of Science 31(4):383-390.
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