Radical Prunings: A Novel of Officious Advice from the Contessa of Compost

This rather deceptive work purports to be the collected horticultural columns of one opinionated Mertensia Corydalis. As Mertensia answers her readers' innocent gardening questions, she reveals more than she intends about her life, her relationship (from her prissy ex-husband to questionable interactions with her employees, Miss Vong and Tran), and her state of mind. Dear Agnes; Looking now at the snow-crusted crocus in my own garden, I cannot forget the very day their progenitors were planted. I crawled around on hands and knees for hours one October day nearly thirty years ago, making hundreds of holes with a dibble, while my daughter Astrid toddled along after me, placing a crocus bulb in each hole (Pointy end up, angel, hairy end down, like Daddy). Norton, my former husband, who had taken to wearing Japanese farmer pants buttoned at the ankles, clogs that never needed hosing off, since he never stepped off the pea-gravel paths, and a straw coolie hat with a chin cord that could be pushed back to hang behind his shoulders if he ever happened to work up a sweat, walked up and down the edge of the bed pointing with a bamboo switch, There, And there. And there. I wondered what it would feel like to plunge a fat dibble into the flesh of a human foot.