Subtle and Not So Subtle Changes

Sometimes when I close the office at the Pearl S. Buck Birthplace something catches my eye and instead of leaving right away I linger, my attention captured by something that is going on on the grounds.  Our groundhog guests have moved from under the porch of the Stulting House to under the Carpenter Shack.  That's good because they're no longer undermining the porch of a National Historic Structure, not so good because it's awfully close to the garden!  But they're as cute as ever, darn those things! 

This would be the Good Earth Garden

After locking up I walked around outside to see if things were growing in the garden yet, and if they had done any damage.  Whenever I seem them out of their borrow they are nibbling on wild flowers, in other words, the weeds in the yard.  But that may well be because that is all that is available so far this year.  Once that garden is producing delicious vegetables, it may be too much to pass up.

Pearl S. Buck in Schools and Universities Today

Pearl grew up in this home in Zhenjiang China and then
was a teacher herself, at the university there. 
All rights reserved by meckleychina

Do you study the life of Pearl S. Buck at your school?  

In a recent New Yorker article "Why is Literary Fame So Unpredictable?," Tom Vanderbilt uses Pearl S. Buck as proof that literary prizes do little to ensure the enduring reputation of an author, and asserts that her work is hardly read anymore.  I don't know how Pearl Buck stacks up against her contemporaries in terms of how much she is read these days, but Vanderbilt seems to have forgotten that The Good Earth, the best-selling, highly acclaimed novel that was most responsible for getting Pearl Buck all those honors back in the 1930s, received a huge boost in sales when Oprah's Book Club featured it in 2004.  

Landscaping the Grounds of Pearl S. Buck Birthplace

It's Spring, so things have started to bloom around the birthplace.  I'm fascinated by the different pace at which this happens, especially by the large maples in front of the house, which are already green and bushy at the top, but only starting to reveal their leaves on the branches closer to the ground. I suppose that's what happens when I tree grows so tall and majestic. Higher branches reach up for sun, lower ones are blocked by their shade.

That's not all that is changing on the grounds of the Pearl S. Buck Birthplace, where we're giving Mother Nature a little assistance.  If you stop by and walk around the back of the Stulting House, you'll see that our large Good Earth Garden has been "plowed, disked, and tilled," and tomorrow students from Hillsboro Elementary School will come to the Birthplace to do some planting.  Let's hope the garden is as fruitful as last year, when at least 600 lbs of produce were donated from it to local food pantries.  We hope to meet or exceed that amount again this year.  The gardens are a valuable teaching tool, that make the grounds more enticing and appealing.  It's gratifying they can also meet this real need.