Wow! eBook
Jesus Is My Gardener
Author(s): Wade Graham (Author)
- Publication Date: April 25, 2011
- Language: English
- Print length: 20 pages
- ISBN-10: B004Y02MEO
Book Description
“Jesus Is My Gardner” is an intelligent, funny, and original piece by historian and landscape architect Wade Graham. The piece explores the “garden transaction” in contemporary America: the economics of gardeners’ work, measured in units of fuel vs. time; how much gasoline for blowers, mowers, trimmers and edgers; and how many minutes of men in motion are required to provide the crisp-cut lines and clean surfaces their clients expect. In the piece we meet the author’s long-time gardener, Jesus Salazar, and his men, who are from Zacatecas, Mexico, raised on ranches, among trucks, horses, male bravado and sweat, not flowers and linen-clean lawns. They speak little or no English. Their clients are thus Wade’s clients, and so he has become the go-between, expected by both sides to bridge their cultural and economic chasm, translating and relaying complaints, justifications, counter-complaints, admonishments, and promises to reform, teaching the gardeners about horticulture and the owners about the limitations of their mutually-agreed upon business model.
Wade Graham is the author of AMERICAN EDEN: From Monticello to Central Park to Our Backyards: What Our Gardens Tell Us About Who We Are (HarperCollins 2011). He is a Los Angeles-based garden designer, historian, and writer whose work on the environment, landscape, urbanism, and the arts has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Los Angeles Times, OnEarth, Outside, and other publications. He received a B.A. in comparative literature from Columbia University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in American History at UCLA. He is an adjunct professor of public policy at Pepperdine University.
