Polar opposites but lots of people love America’s pastime or messing about in the garden….
The Chicago Sun-Times reviews the latest baseball books.
The St Louis Post Dispatch reviews some of the latest gardening books.
Today’s recommendation for Christmas giving is…. The $64 Tomato by William Alexander. Published by the wonderful Algonquin press, this is a great non-fiction book for all would-be gardeners. I read this book in the summer and it’s definitely worth a look if you are thinking about getting serious in the vegetable patch.
Hey, it should be simple… and cheap too. Middle-aged Bill Alexander battles deer, groundhogs, webworms, weeds, and weather, and his neighbours, while his wife and kids look on in pity. Can you put a price on something that you’ve grown from a seed? Bill’s price is $64 for each of his Brandywine tomatoes. Some how, I am not surprised.
It’s never too early to start thinking about your plans for next year’s garden or, in the short term, Christmas presents for the soil worker in your life.
The Times of London has put together a great list of the best gardening books of the year.
I am not what you would call a green thumb, in fact if plants could talk I’m sure they would shout black death which is why I cut the grass and make the compost and my partner guards the plants from my cursed spade.
Times Bestselling Gardening Books
Boing Boing highlights an interesting blog posting about Richard Evans Schultes’s Golden Guide to Hallucinogenic Plants.
The Dallas Morning News has a feature about a book by Silvio Manno called The Forestiere Underground Gardens: A Pictorial Journey - telling the story of how Baldassare Forestiere built 10 acres of underground gardens in California.
Using little more than a shovel, pick, wheelbarrow and his imagination, Mr. Forestiere carved his living quarters in about eight years, starting in 1906. He continued to dig, expanding by 1923 to 10 acres of patios, walkways and chambers.
We just placed an interview with author Amy Stewart on to AbeBooks.com. She has penned a book called Flower Confidential - an insight into flowers, or rather the cut flowers you buy from florists and supermarkets. Amy’s been getting plenty of attention - the New York Times reviewed her book several weeks ago. She’s in the middle of a booktour with appearances in California still to come - see the bottom of this article for dates and venues.
The book is definitely worth a read. I can’t say I’ve ever considered where flowers come from - I go into the store, buy them and walk away. Amy reveals that those flowers have probably travelled thousands of miles by plane before arriving in your local florist. Also this book has a beautiful cover.
A major blow this morning for horticulturalists everywhere - all gardening books are now out of date thanks to climate change.
“Books that were written in the 1980s and early 1990s, such as Geoff Hamilton’s The First Time Garden from 1988, no longer accurately reflect the fact that many plants that would normally be killed off by cold weather are now surviving longer through the winter.”
Important lesson learned: visiting a herb farm can be hugely regenerating. Take 'Hazelwood Herb Farm.' Out front: an attractive garden, with requisite pond + bench for quiet contemplation + goldfish (and also a frog - though this is an assumption based on some ripples and the disgruntled 'plop' I heard as I wandered up, obviously without much contemplative grace.) The nursery is gorgeous. Housed in three airy wooden structures, are row after green row of glowingly healthy little plants. They‘re obviously completely pampered, and they all have hand written signs stating their names and properties. The names were mostly totally unfamilliar, and provoked the imagination. Some of my favourites:
Pendulous Sage
Goldsticks Tansy
Sweet Cicely
Good King Henry
Motherwort, Mugwort, Figwort, and, in case that wasn’t enough, Soapwort
Coltsfoot
Goliath Elecampane
Among the seemingly endless varieties of herbs, eleven types of rosemary are available and roughly as many of lavender, mint, sage and thyme. The proprietor there, seeming genuinely concerned for the plant's welfare, took a lot of care to let me know how to look after my bay laurel. The two inch plant I'd chosen is evidently already a year old and if I look after it properly, it will live for years, growing several feet (fingers crossed for the little guy.) His doing so definitely contributed to the sense that is was an absolutely nurturing, deeply peaceful little environment. The hour or so spent there was like meditating, and I left feeling that I‘d achieved that elusive 'escape from modern life' for a little while. There has been a lot written lately instructing people on how to slow down and simplify things. Poking around a well tended nursery in the country is a great little 'natural rhythm' booster-shot.
Ah Spring (and Summer)! How we have missed you.
The weather has turned pleasant (and least here on the left coast), and so naturally thoughts of being outdoors and BBQs are abundant. And part of this is getting the garden back into shape and the veggie patch underway.
I never been a big fan of the over-elaborate over-manicured garden - perferring the native plants (that book was the bible as I moved through the botany courses at university) and a bit of happy accident planning.
Being actively involved in the garden is a new thing for me, so any suggestion on good gardening books (specifically vegetable/fruit gardening) are most welcome.