Flowers for a Friday night

The other day, I stopped in Prairie Lights Books, which is an Iowa City landmark, to check their calendar selection. Steve and I still hadn’t acquired a wall calendar to replace the Andy Warhol model that saw us through 2006, and I wanted to take advantage of any after-after-after Christmas sales that might be in full effect. By the near-end of January, I figured, they had to want to offload a little bit of that sort of merchandise.

After flipping through the available calendars and making my selection (Wayne Thiebaud paintings—Steve and I both saw his exhibit a few years ago at The Corcoran in Washington D.C., and Steve likes cakes. “And ice cream,” Steve said, pointing to the ice cream painting featured in December.), I stopped over at the gardening section, just to browse.

A bright orange cover featuring a striking daisy caught my eye. That looks familiar, I thought, reaching for the book. Well, of course it did. Amy Stewart’s newest book, Flower Confidential: The Good, The Bad and The Beautiful in the Business of Flowers, had finally hit the shelves.

About a week after I started blogging, I discovered Amy’s writing in the New York Times. As I became part of the blogging community, I couldn’t help but get to know more about her. She’s one of the three bad-ass bloggers keeping Garden Rant alive and kicking, and I’m a fan of Dirt, her personal blog, too. Her first book, From the Ground Up: The Story of a First Garden, inspired me, taught me an awful lot of interesting gardening information, and, during the epilogue, actually made me cry.

But I didn’t know any of this when I first read that New York Times article, which was excerpted from Flower Confidential. I only knew that her topic fascinated me, and that I definitely wanted to get my hands on this book when it came out. At the time, I hadn’t even fallen in love with gardening, so I can’t blame it on that.

Amy’s going to be in Iowa City on Friday night, reading from Flower Confidential at Prairie Lights. The reading starts at 7 p.m., and if you’re in the area, please come by. You can also check out the reading online.

Be sure to check out Amy’s reading schedule for upcoming events—you owe it to yourself not to miss this smart and sassy writer who has traveled the world to lift the lid off the floral industry. After Iowa City, she’ll be in California, the Washington D.C. area, Portland (Ore.), Seattle, Austin, Salt Lake City (Kalyn, you know you want to be there!), and Park City (Utah), and that’s just in February.

Not a gardener? Well, have you ever bought flowers? That’s what I thought. So read the book already (and, if you’re in the market for a copy, buy it from your locally owned, independent bookseller)! You’ll be a better consumer the next time you need to apologize for something, or the next time you just want to bring a little beauty into your house.

Photo credit for image of the book cover: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Photo credit for image of Amy Stewart: Roni Mocan