Favorite Books?

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Permalink Reply by Susan Singley on January 2, 2009 at 10:39pm

I feel I must add my two cents as reading about gardening and cooking is almost as good as gardening and cooking.

I have many favorites that I had to buy as much as to read as to loan out to friends. The top three that spend as much time away from home as in it are:

Weed 'em and Reap: a weed eater reader, by Roger Welsch
Noah's Garden: Restoring the Ecology of our own Backyards, by Sara Stein
The Earth Moved, by Amy Stewart


There are many books that tell us how to garden.... fewer that are terrific at reminding me why I keep doing it, despite rolled eyes at more tomatoes, sore back and knees, gnats and slugs. In the deep of Winter, I love to curl up with a good book that excites me all over again at the wondrous cycle I get to be part of.

Susan

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Permalink Reply by Beva on January 3, 2009 at 6:26am

Can I add black flies, ticks and mosquitoes to your list?!!! :) Oh, and Japanese beetles!!!

Thank you Susan! A good book is such a joy! I read most every night, but never feel like I really have enough time. Evening seems to be such a long time, and the TV needs to be blaring... I'd love to have a little nook that I could sit in and be cozy to read... maybe a cat to sit on my lap or a collie to cuddle!

I don't know if you can find this book, but my favorite and very tattered garden book is "Great Garden Companions- A Companion planting system for a beautiful chemical-free vegetable garden, by Sally Jean Cunningham"
I like this book because she actually encourages leaving some weeds for habitat for benificial's... those critters that belong in our gardens! . I found this book at a salvage store and I refer to it for everything... but it is for ordinary gardens and not inclusive of a wide array of plants...it was geared for gardening in the northeastern region.

We have snow on the ground here now, and all is a frozen landscape... so gardening is a remote thought. I did go out to brush the snow off my greenhouse and found the temp inside yesterday to be 40 degrees when it was only 24 outside! I had to back out the door, and hope that soon I will be able to bask in the heat of my little plant heaven!!!

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Permalink Reply by Susan Singley on January 3, 2009 at 1:55pm

Well, Beva,

Great Garden Companions, was one of the first gardening books I purchased when the Library sent armed guards to demand their copy back. If yours is the same edition I have,.... which I just remembered I loaned out a few months ago, I love the photos and line drawings in it also the advice on attracting beneficial insects, toads, and birds to your yard and garden. My first eye opener about how organic growing helps the ecosystem, thereby helping us.

If you love this one, you should enjoy any of those books on my little list. All of which cultivate an awe of the natural systems which work in the wild. When we try to mess around with the natural world, we often get it wrong, the imbalance causes the problems that people try to solve with chemicals--making a greater imbalance.

Your local library should have at least one of the books on the list. If you keep it too long, they will get testy, though. If my library is anything like yours.

I'd like a nook, maybe a squashy chair by a picture window, for reading. I settle for the kitchen table in the early morning with coffee or tucked in bed at night with tea. I have two dogs who like to keep my feet warm, which is welcome in the Winter. Who knew that dogs snore?

Have fun shopping and reading. Hope you find the perfect read to keep you going until Spring hits your neck of the woods.

Susan

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Permalink Reply by Beva on January 3, 2009 at 8:07pm

Oh, Dear! I had to chuckle at the thought of the "Library Police" coming to wrest the Garden Companion from your grasp!
This was true for me too... that book opened my eyes to the potential and importance of organic growing. The author did a very good job of passing on her experience without being preachy or pretentious. It was a good read as well as informative. I loved her recipes for blight and other such things. This book made me think outside of the box of the way I was raised to plant in rows.
I love having my garden look like a palette of colors... not some regimented monotone green place. I have not yet achieved the look I'd like, but I am hoping with the addition of my little greenhouse that I will be able to raise more flowering benificals to add to the garden space. Also, I no longer feel that I need to exterminate every weed I see, or have the compulsion to slay snakes or other hoppy-crawly critters! I welcome them now that I understand their role.
I am hoping that with the help of a Native American woman I am coming to know, I can bring more indigenous plants to my garden. She wrote tonight to say she would help me to find some wild greens to transplant to the gardens... I am excited!
If you go to Susun Weed's website, you will find a woman named Grandmother Waynonaha listed under authors... this is the woman I have become familiar with and has expressed she will help me to find these plants I seek!! This lady lives about an hour from me, so I can easily travel to her, or she to me. She had already taught me many things... and I am grateful!
I love gardening because there is always something new to learn. This woman grew up similar to the way I did and she lived a sustainable type life as a child. Soo... there is so much I'd like to learn!!! This keeps life interesting!!!
:)
Beva

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Permalink Reply by Katherine Turcotte on January 3, 2009 at 9:27pm

You might enjoy "The Invisible Garden" by Dorothy Sucher - you can probably find on www.amazon.com for a steal, I get most of my book from there - here is an excerpt -
"The blue farmhouse had a neglected, almost derelict air. It sat beside the road in a semicircular clearning behind which rose a wooded hill. As I picked my way to the door, between the sodden mattressess and smashed cardboard cartons that lay decomposing in the mud, I asked myself what I was doing there. I'd come to Vermont to spend a quiet country weekend, and now I was in the clutches of a realtor intent on showing me every property on the market. Why had I thought that looking at houses would be a fun way to spend a rainy day?"
I have to say you will get caught up in this book that rolls along lyrically. I love it!
Also try looking for any of the Stillmeadow books by author Gladys Taber (Stillmeadow Road, Stillmeadow Daybook are good ones to start with), she lived on farm called Stillmeadow in Connecticut.
I will list more for you as I find them!
Happy reading, I just love curling up with a good book - hehehe tons of books!

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Permalink Reply by Beva on January 4, 2009 at 10:49am

Thanks Katherine!
I did notice your stacks of books when I was looking through your photo album! But, in your defense it is a job security/risk that you have to "suffer though"... right? :)

This book you mentions does sound exactly like the type I enjoy! I have a Barnes & Noble gift card and usually they carry similar to what Amazon does... I will look! I am guessing that this character in the book did not escape the clutches of the real estate agent... and had one of those fatal attractions to some derelict house that so badly needed TLC... and tons of money pumped into it. Now that is fodder for a good story, don't you agree? Lots of potential!

You were also the person who was interested in Susun Weed? Did you read what I told Susan Singley above? This Native woman that I am spending time with is an absolute encyclopedia. I am enjoying getting to know her. It is a joy for me to find someone who has a clue about how I am wired to think. I respect her years of learning and her willingness to share heart song with me. I am hoping through her that I can gather more of the plants that belong on my land and in this region.

Thanks for the suggestions!!!
:)
Beva

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Permalink Reply by PADDY on January 4, 2009 at 2:52pm

Paddys is grow your own veg by Carol Klien

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Permalink Reply by Beva on January 4, 2009 at 5:46pm

Hey Paddy... thanks! What do you like to grow? I assume the climate in your country is similar to what we have here in the coast of Maine...

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Permalink Reply by Michelle W. Flannery on January 8, 2009 at 10:51pm

Hi Beva. You sure have gotten a lot of replies to your discussion. Many excellent suggestions! But when someone asks me about my favorite books, I'm always going to say, Jean Auel's Earth's Children Series:

Clan of the Cave Bear
Valley of the Horses
The Mammoth Hunters
The Plains of Passage
Shelters of Stone

I cannot express how incredible these books are! Start with Clan of the Cave Bear, the first in the series, and you'll be hooked - from the very first page, when a 5-year old girl is left orphaned and alone in an earthquake!
You want recipes? The book is full of them! There's incredibly detailed information on identifying and foraging for plants. Want to know the medicinal uses of plants? There's an abundance of meticulously researched information woven into a compelling story of prehistoric peoples trying to survive in a harsh land of cold and ice. Add to this the struggle between two different peoples and the one girl child who can change them both as she grows into a beautiful, powerful woman desired by every man, but in love with only one! And there's much about these different people's spirituality - totem spirits, the earth mother. I promise you, you'll love this book. And I know you can find a used paperback copy pretty easily. It's really an incredible read, and I hope you'll give it a try.

My only other recommendation for you Beva is Woodswoman, by Anne LaBastille. It's the autobiograhy of a young woman who left her marriage and pursued her dream to move into the Adirondack mountains alone, build her own cabin, and live free of civilization. She would canoe to a small community for supplies, but trek across the icy lake on foot in winter. She details buildling her cabin and how she survived alone, surrounded by nature.

John recommends Swiss Family Robinson, the naturalist version.

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Permalink Reply by Beva on January 9, 2009 at 6:02am

Thanks Michelle!
I actually, have read the cave bear books... they were wonderful! The Woodswoman book sound interesting too. I read something similar written by a biologist who did the same.. built the cabin, lived alone and studied Ravens. I forget the name of the book and the author, but it was set in Maine near a lake. I think one of his books was tiltled A Winter in the Maine Woods... or similar to that.

I just picked up a new cookbook.. Cooking in Cast Iron by Mara Reid Rogers. I love my cast iron.. there just is nothing like it!

I am reading an interesting and informative book by Ed McCaa "The Creator's Code" I think it would be a book that would interest you with your heritage. It should be easily available as it was published in 2007.

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Permalink Reply by Michelle W. Flannery on January 9, 2009 at 8:35am

Beva, I'll keep "The Creator's Code" in mind next time I'm book shopping. Thanks.

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Permalink Reply by Katherine Turcotte on January 9, 2009 at 10:32pm

I love the Woodswoman books by Anne LaBastille - they are awesome!
Kathy of the Enchanted Wood

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