Hi everybody, it's Joe Lample, the Joe behind Joe Gardner, and welcome to the Joe Gardner

show.

Today I'm speaking with author and New York Times' opinion writer Margaret Wrinkle.

Margaret is out with a new book, The Comfort of Crows, A Backyard Year.

It's a book of short essays with 52 chapters taking you through each week of the year through

Margaret's keen awareness of the natural world, many times from her own suburban Nashville

backyard.

Although her mother was a passionate gardener, Margaret doesn't consider herself to be

a gardener, but if that's truly the case, she's the most in touch non-gardner I've

ever spoken to.

And that was my conclusion early into her book, and I became more convinced of that, the

deeper into the book I got.

Margaret's writing in this book has been described as a literary devotional that follows

the creatures and plants in her backyard over the course of a year.

Her short essays are beautifully written, sharing her love of nature, her respect for

the natural world, the highs and the lows of trying to do the right thing when you're

just trying to save an animal's life and just calling attention to the ordinary miracles

in her own backyard, which lead her readers to noticing the ordinary miracles around

them too.

Margaret says she wrote The Comfort of Crows to be much more transparent about what is

happening right before our eyes with an increasing sense of urgency about the need to make people

understand how fragile these small miracles really are.

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