Posts under ‘Books’

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m a big fan of Amy Stewart, who blogs at Dirt and Garden Rant, and who writes great books about the wild, wonderful world of plants. So, it should come as no surprise that I was delighted to learn that her next book, Wicked Plants: A Book [...]

When the book arrived, I had no idea what to expect. If I had, I would have hustled it into my office, shut the door, and spent several moments alone with it. Maybe several hundred moments. This is that kind of book. Once I unboxed it, I realized what I was dealing with. I stole [...]

There are crazy search terms that lead people to my blog. But why, oh why, would someone come here because they searched for “Harry Potter, naked”? That’s so wrong, people. THIS IS A BLOG ABOUT GROWING THINGS. And by that, I mean plants. Not Potter.

I’d like to tell you that I have a very simple philosophy for living, but in truth, I am a woman of many corollaries. Among these is that I believe strongly in taking leaps of faith—trying things out just because they have potential. The way I see it, at worst, I end up with a [...]

As she demonstrated with our red snapper fixin’s, The Mint Killer has turned around her reputation this year. In the meantime, my mint has been struggling—it was doing fine until it didn’t get any water for three days. Apparently mint really can be killed—by all kinds of people. On Friday, when I was at The [...]

Karel Capek didn’t care much for growing vegetables. In “On Market Gardeners,” one of the short essays that comprise The Gardener’s Year, he addresses the readers’ imagined complaints that he only traffics in flowers. “In reply to this charge I say that in one of the numerous phases of my life I also ruled over [...]

When you’re new to gardening—and I still consider myself firmly planted in newbie soil—everything is a revelation. As the various books of the Garden Bloggers’ Book Club have rolled out, it has introduced me to topics and authors about which I know nothing. Other garden bloggers, however, post about how a book is one of [...]

During my week between jobs, I’ve been working my way through Two Gardeners: Katharine S. White and Elizabeth Lawrence – A Friendship in Letters edited by Emily Herring Wilson, which is the February selection of the Garden Bloggers’ Book Club. In a letter dated June 15, 1959, Katharine White adds, “P.S. It is 48 degrees [...]

As I said last week, Amy Stewart is on a book tour for her new book, Flower Confidential: The Good, The Bad and The Beautiful in the Business of Flowers. Steve and I attended the reading, and though Amy had started the day with a flight that took off somewhere around (and by around, I [...]

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 [...]