{"id":314,"date":"2011-06-07T23:17:02","date_gmt":"2011-06-08T06:17:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/delightfilledart.wordpress.com\/?p=314"},"modified":"2016-01-27T16:08:17","modified_gmt":"2016-01-28T00:08:17","slug":"the-spirit-is-a-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nancyduckhildebrand.com\/?p=314","title":{"rendered":"The spirit is a garden"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Sometimes he used a spade in his garden, and sometimes he read and wrote. He had but one name for these two kinds of labor; he called them gardening. \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThe Spirit is a garden,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 said he”
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u201d Victor Hugo<\/a> (Les Mis\u00c3\u00a9rables<\/a>)<\/p>\n

I just read this, in my new nightly ritual of reading the kids to sleep with an early English edition of Les Mis\u00c3\u00a9rables that I have from my great aunt’s house. I have been a huge fan of this story since about 1990 when our class traveled to Toronto to see the show at the Royal Alexandra Theatre. I loved the show, and dubbed a classmate’s copy of the soundtrack. One day when visiting my Great Aunt, who lived in the same house where she was raised by my Great Grandparents, I spotted an old edition of Les Mis\u00c3\u00a9rables in her lawyer’s bookshelf, behind glass doors. I borrowed it and read the whole thing. About 10 years later, my beau (now husband) bought me a 4-volume French edition. In Paris we had to visit Victor Hugo’s house and I still wear my souvenir watch I bought there.<\/p>\n

All this to say that picking up my copy of Les Mis\u00c3\u00a9rables is just one of many small turns of the spade that I have been taking with my own spirit lately. Delving back into the “me” that had been somewhat vacated during the toddler years and rapid pace of the urban working life.<\/p>\n

Tending my spirit, reading Wendell Berry again, revisiting nature, pulling out the pen, dabbling in art. All this labour in my garden is at the least stirring the soil.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Sometimes he used a spade in his garden, and sometimes he read and wrote. He had but one name for these two kinds of labor; he called them gardening. \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThe Spirit is a garden,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 said he” \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Victor Hugo (Les … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4376,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"kt_blocks_editor_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27,28,31,33,40],"tags":[80,99,207,638,652,722,898,972],"class_list":["post-314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-2","category-communication","category-faith-2","category-genealogy-2","category-writing-2","tag-altered-book","tag-art","tag-book-art","tag-mixed-media","tag-motherhood","tag-painting","tag-spiritual","tag-victor-hugo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyduckhildebrand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyduckhildebrand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyduckhildebrand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyduckhildebrand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyduckhildebrand.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nancyduckhildebrand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyduckhildebrand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyduckhildebrand.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyduckhildebrand.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyduckhildebrand.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}