Reviewed by Eileen Quinn Knight, Ph.D.
This author is a very prolific writer! The book itself was supposed to be an article that became a short book. But it is not about an experienced, knowledgeable gardener as it is about a writer who goes into his back garden and , om the course of writing breaks ends up writing about what happens “out there’ and ‘in here’. The book is autobiographical and so the author looks at his own life as well as what is around him; he takes advantage of the multifaceted themes of nature, almost locally inconsequential as well as world-side and geographically immensely significant, he writes ‘to’ and ‘from’ his own activities and the thoughts that bubble and burst into words.
There are little discoveries, observations and themes, but principally, it is a book about thought taking a start from doing and waddling, if not running along, in the hope that the flight of this word catches the sunlight as it rises and speaks of what is so much greater than itself. There are pictures, poems and essays that support his writing. Christine Sunderland in her photos describes one of her photographs as “God’s garden which is, as she states sure that she will agree inclusive of what belongs to her.
In his summary he states: “The fifth way design: 1. we observe that material bodies act toward ends. 2. Anything that acts toward an end either acts out of knowledge or under the direction for something with knowledge, ”as the arrow is directed b the archer.” 3. But many natural beings lack knowledge. 4. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural thing are directed to their ends; and this being we call God.”
“An Unlikely Gardener” sings of “the one who comes, you are the one who is already here, Ready and able to save me into the bark of Peter, You who are the Risen Christ, rising in me’ and the Savior. The greatest of all gardeners, accompany you through this ’vision of loveliness’ Etheredge has written, and may you grow closer to Him because of it”. The author certainly has nuggets of goodness throughout the book that will appeal to different readers. Buy it and give it to a friend whether the person is a gardener or not!