Finding peace in between the pages and deep down in the soil

MILLERTON — Peace. It’s a great concept if you can unearth and embrace it. And Margaret Roach, author, gardener, radio personality, blogger, website designer and consultant is determined to do exactly that with her latest project, a book entitled, “and I Shall Have Some Peace There.”Roach spoke about her new book, and the road that led her to write it, during a recent interview with The Millerton News.“Throughout my adult life there was a kind of other soul inside with a voice that kept saying, ‘We want to be a hippie and live off the land and be with nature,’” she said, explaining just how she picked up from a job as editorial director of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia after 15 years and moved upstate to her weekend home in Copake Falls full time. “Professional success feeds our self-esteem and makes us feel special, so to take that flying leap was scary, so I suppressed it and became a gardener and that’s how I satisfied that craving,” she said. “But then that became impossible. Then there were the events of 9/11 and that made me want out of the city even more and then it all became too much and so it was layers and layers of the straw that breaks the camel’s back.“Then I said, OK, this is something I dreamed about for more than 20 years,” she said. “I think that’s another aspect — age. I was able to see with more clarity the value of certain things and earning a salary and staying in the fast lane weren’t fulfilling me completely. I knew I would have to trade in a lot to come here and shovel snow and budget differently and figure out a way to support myself, but it would give me a connection to nature and I could see my garden every day.”That was important, because at the bottom of it all — the book, the website, the blog, the radio appearances — is Roach’s garden. In fact, her blog is awaytogarden.com and has been recognized by The New York Times’ Anne Raver as the best garden blog, no small feat in gardening circles. Likewise, her book with the same title, “A Way to Garden,” was named best garden book of the year by the Garden Writers’ Association of America. The projects, for Roach, are the perfect marriage of those things she loves to do most.“Everything I wanted to do was really creative,” she said. “I knew I wanted to write again, and my goal was to write for a living and to live in my garden. I put out a bunch of ideas and thought maybe one would be OK.”Then she tapped into her resources, which included a lot of people in the publishing world she knew from her professional life. Thankfully, she said, her work struck a chord.“It sounded authentic,” she said, adding if she didn’t take the leap, she wouldn’t have found the success she’s had. “If I stayed at my old job I wouldn’t have even written a proposal. Just leaving gave me the breathing room to conceive of the idea. It just sort of happened.”As a result, Roach has embarked on a journey on which she’s learned much. She said she has discovered a few pearls that could potentially help others.“If you find yourself saying the phrase, ‘I don’t have time for dot, dot, dot,’ and for everyone it’s a different thing we’re referring to, it could be tennis, or painting, or having solitude, etc.,” she said. “I would say try to be mindful of how many times you’re saying that and maybe watch less TV or get off the Internet. The point is to sit down and look at your schedule. I couldn’t afford to leave because I had bills, so I got rid of a lot of stuff. It’s a calculation at first, but it’s really important to find the time.”Roach will be at a reading and book signing at Oblong Books & Music on Saturday, March 12, at 7:30 p.m. Oblong is located at 26 Main St. in Millerton. For more information, call 518-789-3797.Roach will also be the featured speaker at a benefit for the Friends of Taconic State Park in Copake Falls on March 19, at 4 p.m. The benefit is in support of the Copake Iron Works’ furnace cover project. There will be a slide show of Roach’s garden as part of the author’s presentation. Tickets may be purchased at www.ironworks.eventbrite.com. Call 518-966-2730 for more information.

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