Windfalls

Gardiner's Windfalls gathers essays that find the extraordinary in the ordinary. The book opens with Jemima, a drake humorously misnamed at his christening, leading his flock of Indian runner ducks through an orchard in eager, waddling pursuit of the narrator. What begins as a charming pastoral scene becomes a meditation on perception, creativity, and the art of noticing. The essays that follow move through beekeeping, human habits, and the peculiarities of social interaction with a gentle wit that makes you pause and smile. Gardiner writes about idleness not as failure but as necessity, about nature not as spectacle but as conversation. Here, an orchard becomes a philosophy, a duck becomes a lesson in humility, and the small surprises of daily life reveal themselves as the true windfalls. This is writing for those who believe the best things in life are quiet ones.