Southport
Connecticut
Digital Digest : Pequot Library Celebrates The Lure Of The Garden
Schools and Libraries
June 27, 2022
From: Pequot LibraryIndex
- Announcements
- Featured Upcoming Programs
- Special Collections: Clare Leighton
- Recommended Reading: Novels with Garden Themes
- Recommended Reading: The Moon by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Shop for Books Online
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The Digital Digest is a collaborative e-newsletter by Pequot Library staff, and managed by our Marketing and Communications department. Questions and feedback can be sent to [email protected].
Our Spring Fundraising Campaign closes on June 30! THANK YOU to everyone who has already given their support. We couldn't be more excited to be welcoming patrons, students, volunteers, and our amazing community back into our building to enjoy all our Library has to offer.
Help us end this fiscal year strong so we can bring even more programming and services that are "free as air to all" in the year to come.
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We're hiring for multiple positions! Click here to view our available job postings.
Annual July 4th Bike Parade
starting at 10 a.m.
Meet at the Five Corners in Southport Village with decorated bikes, scooters, and wagons, and parade down Pequot Avenue to arrive at the Library's Great Lawn, where we enjoy face-painting, hula hooping, bubble gum contests, snacks, and crafts.
Click here to see our full calendar of events.
Clare Leighton, Diary, 1914
Pequot Library Special Collections
Clare Leighton was born on April 12, 1898, in London, England, and came of age during the first and second World Wars. When she began her diary for the year 1914, she was a 15-year-old focused on her art and pining for a young man she refers to as “SS”, who had recently sat for a portrait. Her days revolve around helping her mother, sketching and working in the garden, and taking classes.
Soon, however, the war was enveloping much of Europe and England itself. Leighton writes of rising food prices, falling markets, and witnessing the arrival of starving refugees, and of learning that “SS” will be going off to fight.
The following year, Leighton’s older brother, Roland, died in action.
In 1947, having moved to the United States, Leighton addressed a horticultural meeting in St. Paul, Minnesota, with a lecture titled “The Philosophy of Gardening.” In it, she talks about gardening’s ability to sustain people in times of war and conflict:
I felt as I planted those trees that I was doing something for an age beyond me. You are doing things which last beyond this president or that president, or this man in Congress or that one, or this political ideology or that. You are doing things which are going to have their repercussions way down the ages, of which your great-great-great-grandchildren will reap the benefit.
Clare Leighton died at her home in Connecticut in 1989.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: A Savannah Story
by John Berendt
Shots rang out in Savannah's grandest mansion in the misty, early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. John Berendt's sharply observed, suspenseful, and witty nonfiction narrative reads like a thoroughly engrossing novel.
The Language of Flowers
by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
A mesmerizing, moving, and elegantly written debut novel, The Language of Flowers beautifully weaves past and present, creating a vivid portrait of an unforgettable woman whose gift for flowers helps her change the lives of others even as she struggles to overcome her own troubled past.
Looking for something special? Sign up for an Adult Book Bundle to receive a curated box of two books and a cozy refreshment, especially for you.
The Moon
by Robert Louis Stevenson
Illustrator Tracey Campbell Pearson takes readers on an illustrative late-night adventure set to the text of Robert Louis Stevenson's poem. We follow not only the moon as it shines on the creatures of the night, but also a father and his young son out on a late-night romp through quiet streets and fields, in a boat around a moonlit bay, and home again to sleep in their cozy house. Detailed, luminous watercolor-and-ink paintings capture the magic of nighttime, and its many nocturnal creatures, as well as the special love between a father and son.
Shop Used Books Online!
Did you know that you can shop a range of new, used, and collectable books through our online storefront? Click the link below to see what's new!
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