Into the Garden with Charles

Into the Garden with Charles is a very moving novel about a man’s journey to find love and connections. Interestingly, he didn’t find this “great love” when he was looking for it in his early life. Instead, he found love after he was passionately connected with his garden. This is an interesting exploration of how connections are made, both with people and with passions. Skip’s story is an authentic experience with a somewhat-tired cliché “you find love when you’re not looking for it.” However, I feel that Skip’s story is different than that, and meant something more than that. Skip threw himself into his garden, and ended up becoming a better person because of it. Gardens require amazing amounts of care and nurturing, and the more you put into a garden, the more you get out of it. And then, because of the compassion Skip learned from his gardening, he was able to wisely care for a romantic relationship when it did come along. To me, this is a beautiful story of the power of connections. It holds true in almost every aspect of life that you get out what you put in. We are presented with thousands of opportunities for connections every day, and we pass almost all of these up. By necessity, we cannot possibly connect with every person or piece of information we meet—that would be impossible. But, what if we, and especially me, tried to pay more attention to these opportunities? For Skip, he never imagined gardening would ultimately lead to a great romance, but it did exactly that. This is a wonderful, true story of the importance of all connections, and of nurturing the connections that matter most to you.