quote book

"A book is like a garden carried in the pocket."
- Chinese proverb

Monday in the Backyard Herb Garden

Recap of our volunteer work day at the county extension demonstration herb garden:
Sharron and Gloria met me in garden to work, we worked from 9-1:30 with a small learning break. Mike brought 12 pails of compost. We spread it and dug some of it in.

We planted:
1 very small ginkgo tree (a bare rooted whip I purchased at Genesee Conservation District last year and grew in a pot)
1 white common yarrow (Flint Yard and Garden plant sale)
3 Achillea 'Terra Cotta' yarrow (Bluestone Perennials)
3 Dianthus 'Bath's Pink' (Bluestone Perennials)
onions in 'compost bed' (donated by Pat Whetham)
several seed packets in "compost bed": arugula, swiss chard, kale, dill (seed from Meijers), french sorrel(seed from JLHudson Seedsman).
10 calendula seedlings in culinary circle (seed from Michigan Herb Associates) .

We paused for some herb learning time:
I brought herb butter to sample on a sliced baguette.
(Recipe: whipped butter, lemon zest and fresh lemon juice, and minced chervil, chives, and a little winter savory. We discussed using and freezing herb butter wrapped in waxed paper and shaped in a log as shown in the photo.
This butter we sampled would be great served with poached salmon or chicken, eggs, or on steamed Michigan asparagus.)



I brought bottles of my dried chervil, parsley, chives, and french tarragon to compare with fresh herbs. All these herbs are ready to use fresh from the garden right now. In each case, the fresh samples I picked would be miles better to use right now than last summer's dried herbs.
We also talked about lovage and ginkgo.

I brought some useful books:
For identifying plants: The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Wildflowers- Eastern by Neiring and Olmstead (Knopf)
For i.d. plus information on medicinal uses of plants: Peterson Field Guides Eastern/Central Medicinal Plants, by Foster and Duke, (Houghton Mifflin)
A great little book on using herbs: The Herbal Pantry by Tolley and Mead, (Potter)

I'd like to say a special thanks to Kathy who the painted Herb Garden sign. The color is what I'd call a sort of French lavender blue - it looks great! I'll have to take a photo of it next time I stop by the garden.
Special thanks also goes to Mike for hauling more buckets of compost, and for working on the drainage tile quest. These additions to the garden will be a big improvement.
And loads of appreciation goes to Gloria who led the way double digging that compost into the bed where we planted the yarrow.
Thanks goes in advance to Karen for offering to be our 'watering angel' for the seeds we just planted.
Finally, big thanks to Sharron as well for the hard work on Monday - we always comment the garden looks better after a work session. Sharron offered to map the garden when she can get there on her own because we are always tired out after working on our gardening projects.
The working volunteers are what makes the project good.

Rainy day

It's damp, drizzly, and Monday morning, when I should be working at the demo Herb Garden at the Extension, so I thought this would be a good time to talk about that project.

We had a good initial meeting two weeks ago at the Extension office. I had received a list of trainee volunteers from the last Master Gardener class, and had passed around a volunteer sign up sheet at the April M.G. meeting, so I had a lot of potential volunteers. I sent e-mails to 10 and 9 showed up for the meeting. We are already doing better than last year!

Terry reserved a room for us so the cold weather wasn't an issue. For introductions we talked about why each of us wanted to work in this project - to learn about herbs was the common response, and what our assets were that we could bring to the project. All except my gardening friend Sharron are Master Gardeners and most are also involved with other gardening volunteer projects. For example Gloria is a former florist who is also working on a raised bed herb garden for seniors in her town. Mike has a small farm, selling compost, mums and pumpkins in the fall, just put up a greenhouse and planted herbs in hope of getting into
business wants to learn about the plants he's growing.

Kathy offered right away to spruce up and paint the Herb Garden sign. Margaret offered to bring a Mideastern chicken and rice herbal dish made with garam masala that she makes for our lunch one week. Mike offered to bring tubs of his compost and he has a line on some old drainage tiles that we could use in the Tea bed for restraining the mints. Sharron has graphic art talent and will finally make me a good map of the plot.
Doesn't this sound like a great group?

As a group we decided to meet on Monday mornings to work in the garden with an eye to having it in good shape for the Genesee County Master Gardener Garden Tour at the end of June.

We toured the garden, and I noted that some of our Master Gardeners hadn't even been back there yet. Terry printed up copies to distribute of a nice Extension bulletin that I'd found on the Internet, from the University of Kentucky, on growing culinary herbs, which is a good place for new herbies to begin learning about herbs.

Back indoors I had a snack ready to share, of course, tiny heart-shaped lavender short scones (biscuits, really), that I made that morning, with a delicious Queen Anne's Lace jelly that I had purchased from Donna Frawley who spoke at the Herb Symposium two days before.

We ended the meeting with a project. I brought bottles and bags of dried herbs from my garden and also from last year's Extension herb garden. We discussed making herbal tea (tisane) from dried herbs as we passed around sample herbs. I discussed my favorite herbal tea book for beginners The Herbal Tea Garden by Marietta Marshall Marcin (Garden Way, 1993).
We made our own personal herbal tea blends and each of us made two teabags to take home, using paper tea bags that you fill yourself and seal with an iron. (I got them from Nichol's Garden Nursery which you can find online.)

I dug up some more names, and sent some more e-mails out, and got no responses. (Howd'ya like that?) Last Monday we nine met in the garden and set to work. Luckily the fall cleanup went well, so the two to three hours were mainly spent cleaning up the debris of winter.
I brought dandelion tea to sample, and talked about dehydrating the leaves of the young dandelion for a spring tonic tea and the roots which I grind for a mineral rich winter tea. I brought along a package of a commercial health food store tea called Dandy Blend to compare with my bottle of home ground dandelion root. They look and taste a lot different!
Dandy Blend had a cute picture of a dandelion on the label and it is very tasty and good for you. But it is pricey, on par with instant coffee I'd guess. The label of Dandy Blend calls it Instant Dandelion Beverage, but lists roasted barley, rye, chicory root, dandelion root and beetroot. It tastes like Postum which is chicory, I think.
Dandelion root, dehydrated and ground, has a bland flavor. I rather like the Dandy Blend better but like I said it is spendy, so my idea is to mix it half and half with my ground dandelion root.

I think I'll try to do a herb oriented demonstration like this every time we meet, and the volunteers who want to know more about herbs can learn that herbs are just plants that have a use.
Growing herbs is no different from growing flowers and vegetables.
And there is no secret to using them - but there is a secret it seems in today's busy, packaged food oriented society to using herbs, and that is to learn something you want to try and then to actually DO it.
Like the Nike ad suggests.
Only... the weather has to cooperate!

Now for some photos. Here are Calendula flowers drying in my dehydrator. The flavor is so minimal with calendula petals, and retaining the color and shape are important. The dehydrator does a good job in this instance.


A closeup of a herbal tea (tisane) blend: the flowers are of pineapple sage, Salvia elegans.


I 'garbled' the dried leaves from the stems over a clean bedsheet. You can grow a large quantity of herbal tea plants in a very small amount of space and with
minimal expense. You can be confident of how they were grown and how they were harvested and processed. You can have fun making your own custom blends.
So why buy commercial?


Added Note: While I was looking through my photos for something else, I ran across this one of my dandelion project. So I'm adding it later here in this post where it belongs, with the dandelion tea tale. Which may be stepping on Blogging Ethics but I'm doing it anyway.

What you see is my bag of dried leaves, a tray of dried roots and crowns, and my dedicated to herbs coffee grinder with ground root.

NGJL "Hope"

"Hope" by George Fredrick Watts

A bumper sticker on the car in front of me on Hill Road got to me yesterday, while on my way to the Home Street garden to do a neighborhood walk to invite the community to an informational meeting on urban community gardening. It was a quote from Mother Theresa of Calcutta (who we've lately learned also had a jaundiced view of religious institutions) that read: "It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."

Most probably the owner of that bumper was anti-choice in the Snowflake Debate, but I think Sister Theresa was talking about our many daily choices. Are you on the Recession Diet yet? Are you warehousing food? Are you planting a Victory Garden in your backyard? Or are you clearing the rice shelf at Sam's "Club"?
Did the Presidents of Peru and Ecuador telling the United Nations that 'growing food grain for fuel was making the choice to starve people in the third world' affect you as you drove your SUV to the mall?
Did you write or call your congressional representatives about the Farm Bill for Agribusiness, or the Taxpayer Subsidies for Corporate Oil?

What do you think when you read something like this that arrived in my e-mailbox today in my biweekly update from OCA:
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"We should not hide the word hunger in our discussions of this problem just because we cannot hide the reality of hunger among our citizens."
- Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, speaking about the USDA's annual report on hunger in the U.S. For the first time in the agency's history, the USDA avoided the term "hunger" in its report and used a new euphemism in its place. The phrase "suffering from food insecurity" is how the USDA now refers to the nation's 35 million hungry.Learn more: http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_3390.cfm

I don't spend much time listening to sermons, and readers who know me know my position on organized religions. But this old sermon (posted below) that I ran across while Googling 'Audacity + Hope' got to me. Another of those coincidental discoveries on this path I'm on.

I think, beyond the message of the sermon itself, which blow me away with its truth telling, that this sermon reveals a story that our corporate owned mass media missed, perhaps deliberately. I've heard the wealthy media pundits derisively playing with the words 'Hope' and 'Change'. Are they bitter, stupid, or just plain bad people?

Next time you hear someone deride Hope, Know them for who they are.

Here it is:

"Several years ago while I was in Richmond, the Lord allowed me to be in that city during the week of the annual convocation at Virginia Union University School of Theology. There I heard the preaching and teaching of Reverend Frederick G. Sampson of Detroit, Michigan. In one of his lectures, Dr. Sampson spoke of a painting I remembered studying in humanities courses back in the late '50s. In Dr. Sampson's powerful description of the picture, he spoke of it being a study in contradictions, because the title and the details on the canvas seem to be in direct opposition.

"The painting's title is "Hope." It shows a woman sitting on top of the world, playing a harp. What more enviable position could one ever hope to achieve than being on top of the world with everyone dancing to your music?

"As you look closer, the illusion of power gives way to the reality of pain. The world on which this woman sits, our world, is torn by war, destroyed by hate, decimated by despair, and devastated by distrust. The world on which she sits seems on the brink of destruction.

"Famine ravages millions of inhabitants in one hemisphere, while feasting and gluttony are enjoyed by inhabitants of another hemisphere. This world is a ticking time bomb, with apartheid in one hemisphere and apathy in the other. Scientists tell us there are enough nuclear warheads to wipe out all forms of life except cockroaches. That is the world on which the woman sits in Watt's painting.

"Our world cares more about bombs for the enemy than about bread for the hungry. This world is still more concerned about the color of skin than it is about the content of character—a world more finicky about what's on the outside of your head than about the quality of your education or what's inside your head. That is the world on which this woman sits.

"You and I think of being on top of the world as being in heaven. When you look at the woman in Watt's painting, you discover this woman is in hell. She is wearing rags. Her tattered clothes look as if the woman herself has come through Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Her head is bandaged, and blood seeps through the bandages. Scars and cuts are visible on her face, her arms, and her legs.

I. Illusion of Power vs. Reality of Pain

"A closer look reveals all the harp strings but one are broken or ripped out. Even the instrument has been damaged by what she has been through, and she is the classic example of quiet despair. Yet the artist dares to entitle the painting 'Hope'. The illusion of power — sitting on top of the world — gives way to the reality of pain.

"And isn't it that way with many of us? We give the illusion of being in an enviable position on top of the world. Look closer, and our lives reveal the reality of pain too deep for the tongue to tell. For the woman in the painting, what looks like being in heaven is actually an existence in a quiet hell.

"I've been a pastor for seventeen years. I've seen too many of these cases not to know what I'm talking about. I've seen married couples where the husband has a girlfriend in addition to his wife. It's something nobody talks about. The wife smiles and pretends not to hear the whispers and the gossip. She has the legal papers but knows he would rather try to buy Fort Knox than divorce her. That's a living hell.

"I've seen married couples where the wife had discovered that somebody else cares for her as a person and not just as cook, maid jitney service, and call girl all wrapped into one. But there's the scandal: What would folks say? What about the children? That's a living hell.

"I've seen divorcees whose dreams have been blown to bits, families broken up beyond repair, and lives somehow slipping through their fingers. They've lost control. That's a living hell.

"I've seen college students who give the illusion of being on top of the world — designer clothes, all the sex that they want, all the cocaine or marijuana or drugs, all the trappings of having it all together on the outside — but empty and shallow and hurting and lonely and afraid on the inside. Many times what looks good on the outside — the illusion of being in power, of sitting on top of the world—with a closer look is actually existence in a quiet hell.

"That is exactly where Hannah is in 1 Samuel 1 :1-18. Hannah is top dog in this three-way relationship between herself, Elkanah, and Peninnah. Her husband loves Hannah more than he loves his other wife and their children. Elkanah tells Hannah he loves her. A lot of husbands don't do that. He shows Hannah that he loves her, and many husbands never get around to doing that. In fact, it is his attention and devotion to Hannah that causes Peninnah to be so angry and to stay on Hannah's case constantly. Jealous! Jealousy will get hold of you, and you can't let it go because it won't let you go. Peninnah stayed on Hannah, like we say, "as white on rice." She constantly picked at Hannah, making her cry, taking her appetite away.

"At first glance Hannah's position seems enviable. She had all the rights and none of the responsibilities—no diapers to change, no beds to sit beside at night, no noses to wipe, nothing else to wipe either, no babies draining you of your milk and demanding feeding. Hannah was top dog. No baby portions to fix at meal times. Her man loved her; everybody knew he loved her. He loved her more than anything or anybody. That's why Peninnah hated her so much.

"Now, except for the second-wife bit, which was legal back then, Hannah was sitting on top of the world, until you look closer. When you look closer, what looked like being in heaven was actually existing in a quiet hell.

"Hannah had the pain of a bitter woman to contend with, for verse 7 says that nonstop, Peninnah stayed with her. Hannah suffered the pain of living with a bitter woman. And she suffered another pain—the pain of a barren womb. You will remember the story of the widow in 2 Kings 4 who had no child. The story of a woman with no children was a story of deep pathos and despair in biblical days.

"Do you remember the story of Sarah and what she did in Genesis 16 because of her barren womb—before the three heavenly visitors stopped by their tent? Do you remember the story of Elizabeth and her husband in Luke I? Back in Bible days, the story of a woman with a barren womb was a story of deep pathos. And Hannah was afflicted with the pain of a bitter woman on the one hand and the pain of a barren womb on the other.

"Hannah's world was flawed, flaky. Her garments of respectability were tattered and torn, and her heart was bruised and bleeding from the constant attacks of a jealous woman. The scars and scratches on her psyche are almost visible as you look at this passage, where she cries, refusing to eat anything. Just like the woman in Watt's painting, what looks like being in heaven is actually existence in a quiet hell.

"Now I want to share briefly with you about Hannah—the lady and the Lord. While I do so, I want you to be thinking about where you live and your own particular pain predicament. Think about it for a moment.

"Dr. Sampson said he wanted to quarrel with the artist for having the gall to name that painting Hope when all he could see in the picture was hell — a quiet desperation.

"But then Dr. Sampson said he noticed that he had been looking only at the horizontal dimensions and relationships and how this woman was hooked up with that world on which she sat. He had failed to take into account her vertical relationships. He had not looked above her head. And when he looked over her head, he found some small notes of music moving joyfully and playfully toward heaven."

II. The Audacity to Hope

Then, Dr. Sampson began to understand why the artist titled the painting "Hope." In spite of being in a world torn by war, in spite of being on a world destroyed by hate and decimated by distrust, in spite of being on a world where famine and greed are uneasy bed partners, in spite of being on a world where apartheid and apathy feed the fires of racism and hatred, in spite of being on a world where nuclear nightmare draws closer with each second, in spite of being on a ticking time bomb, with her clothes in rags, her body scarred and bruised and bleeding, her harp all but destroyed and with only one string left, she had the audacity to make music and praise God. The vertical dimension balanced out what was going on in the horizontal dimension.
And that is what the audacity to hope will do for you.

"The apostle Paul said the same thing. "You have troubles? Glory in your trouble. We glory in tribulation." That's the horizontal dimension. We glory in tribulation because, he says, "Tribulation works patience. And patience works experience. And experience works hope. (That's the vertical dimension.) And hope makes us not ashamed." The vertical dimension balances out what is going on in the horizontal dimension. That is the real story here in the first chapter of 1 Samuel. Not the condition of Hannah's body, but the condition of Hannah's soul — her vertical dimension. She had the audacity to keep on hoping and praying when there was no visible sign on the horizontal level that what she was praying for, hoping for, and waiting for would ever be answered in the affirmative.

"What Hannah wanted most out of life had been denied to her. Think about that. Yet in spite of that, she kept on hoping. The gloating of Peninnah did not make her bitter. She kept on hoping. When the family made its pilgrimage to the sanctuary at Shiloh, she renewed her petition there, pouring out her heart to God. She may have been barren, but that's a horizontal dimension. She was fertile in her spirit, her vertical dimension. She prayed and she prayed and she prayed and she kept on praying year after year. With no answer, she kept on praying. She prayed so fervently in this passage that Eli thought she had to be drunk. There was no visible sign on the horizontal level to indicate to Hannah that her praying would ever be answered. Yet, she kept on praying.

"And Paul said something about that, too. No visible sign? He says, "Hope is what saves us, for we are saved by hope. But hope that is seen is not hope. For what a man sees, why does he have hope for it? But if we hope for that which we see not (no visible sign), then do we with patience wait for it."

"That's almost an echo of what the prophet Isaiah said: "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength." The vertical dimension balances out what is going on in the horizontal dimension.

"There may not be any visible sign of a change in your individual situation, whatever your private hell is. But that's just the horizontal level. Keep the vertical level intact, like Hannah. You may, like the African slaves, be able to sing, "Over my head I hear music in the air. Over my head I hear music in the air. Over my head I hear music in the air. There must be a God somewhere."

"Keep the vertical dimension intact like Hannah. Have the audacity to hope for that child of yours. Have the audacity to hope for that home of yours. Have the audacity to hope for that church of yours. Whatever it is you've been praying for, keep on praying, and you may find, like my grandmother sings, "There's a bright side somewhere; there is a bright side somewhere. Don't you rest until you find it, for there is a bright side somewhere."

III. Persistence of Hope

"The real lesson Hannah gives us from this chapter — the most important word God would have us hear — is how to hope when the love of God is not plainly evident. It's easy to hope when there are evidences all around of how good God is. But to have the audacity to hope when that love is not evident — you don't know where that somewhere is that my grandmother sang about, or if there will ever be that brighter day — that is a true test of a Hannah-type faith. To take the one string you have left and to have the audacity to hope — make music and praise God on and with whatever it is you've got left, even though you can't see what God is going to do — that's the real word God will have us hear from this passage and from Watt's painting.

"There's a true-life illustration that demonstrates the principles portrayed so powerfully in this periscope. And I close with it. My mom and my dad used to sing a song that I've not been able to find in any of the published hymnals. It's an old song out of the black religious tradition called "Thank you, Jesus." It's a very simple song. Some of you have heard it. It's simply goes, "Thank you Jesus. I thank you Jesus. I thank you Jesus. I thank you Lord." To me they always sang that song at the strangest times — when the money got low, or when the food was running out. When I was getting in trouble, they would start singing that song. And I never understood it, because as a child it seemed to me they were thanking God that we didn't have any money, or thanking God that we had no food, or thanking God that I was making a fool out of myself as a kid.

Conclusion: Hope is What Saves Us

"But I was only looking at the horizontal level. I did not understand nor could I see back then the vertical hookup that my mother and my father had. I did not know then that they were thanking him in advance for all they dared to hope he would do one day to their son, in their son, and through their son. That's why they prayed. That's why they hoped. That's why they kept on praying with no visible sign on the horizon. And I thank God I had praying parents, because now some thirty-five years later, when I look at what God has done in my life, I understand clearly why Hannah had the audacity to hope. Why my parents had the audacity to hope.
And that's why I say to you, hope is what saves us. Keep on hoping; keep on praying. God does hear and answer prayer.

-The full text of Jeremiah Wright's "Audacity To Hope" sermon in 1990. Maybe, hopefully, Barack Hussein Obama heard the sermon that day. He did, after all, title his book, The Audacity of Hope.

finding Garden Lit in digital libraries

...is a great occupation. Here is a page from a book I found in Google Books.

"Pot-Pourri from a Surrey Garden" was written way back in 1897 by Mrs. C.W. Earle and this copy is in the University of Michigan Library. Read it online and save a tree, find a hard copy through Google Books handy search, or download it.


Pot-pourri from a Surrey Garden By Maria Theresa Earle, Maria Theresa (Villiers) "Mrs. C. W. Earle Earle, ", Lady Constance Georgina Lytton, Constance Lytton

If she had a computer in 1903

... she would certainly have been a garden blogger.
Here is one of the old gardening books I picked up at the Library Bookstore in Ferndale last week: "My Kalendar of Country Delights" by Helen Milman

And here is a scan of the "prelude" pages for Helen, who is long gone. Hope you can read it. She might have made a fine blogger, she had the right attitude.

not just me

So I came home from a cold and gray "spring-break-in-Michigan" lunch with a big pile of gardening books. Tree knew of the best little indie bookstore in Ferndale right near the restaurant where we ate. I ask you how did my son ever find a such a girl?

And so I'm home again looking up a little info about my books on the net and somehow in the link trail I run across this video. Apparently Tori Amos, who incidentally Tree liked enormously a couple of years ago but I of the older generation never heard of, came out with an album based on a theme of beekeeping? Coincidental that I've just become interested in beekeeping this year.

It seems too, from her discussion of this number in her vid, that Ms. Amos is using her talent to explore her own 'path with heart' which is, what I think a lot of people are going at with this personal business of web-logging that some of us have been tugging at the edges of recently...



If you follow the Youtube link you can see the music videos. I just thought the explainer vid was something to think about. Seeing this young woman using bees as a way of exploring something she wants to talk about, put me in the Wayback Machine to a time when I was a young college student suddenly sure my ancient English professor had no idea of what Sylvia Plath's bee poems were talking about. That finding my own validity in thought was a moment of growth into adulthood for me.
I think Tree appreciates Ms. Plath as well, now that I think of it. How these associations do spiral in on something. This time, something to do with bees and validity and expression.

snowing again and a figurative ray of literary sunshine

Thought my bookish readerish type friends might appreciate this website I ran across a few days ago. It's called Daily Lit, and what they do is send you a 'page' of a book of your choice every day in your e-mail. I know, you think you get too much e-mail as it is! and so do I, but this is different for me and you might enjoy it too.
It's a little 3 minute escape, like the old Calgon commercials I used to see on the telly. Remember those spots? the lady in the bathtub dreaming "Take me Away, Calgon!" but I digress.
I chose an old favorite, "The Wind in the Willows" and rereading it a page a day I'm seeing again the humor and gentleness and love of the natural world that made the book a favorite back when.
Some are free, a few need a paid subscription. It would take a long while to run out of the free classics at a page a day - I might have chosen Cervantes or P.G. Wodehouse or Edith Wharton, but I wanted simple pure escapism. Go see if there's a book for you, and let me know!

A winter diversion in floral language

This looks like a helpful article for folks needing a refresher on seed starting. Me, I usually watch Herb starting his tomatoes and peppers before I get enthusiastic about dragging out my stuff, but by then it's late to be starting seeds that need long germinating and growing up, or cold hardy plants that can go out early.

I was just downloading my latest Aubrey photos from my camera and I ran across this pretty photo from the Extension herb garden that I took last summer. (Remember, with Blogger, if you click on the photo you can get the original side photo to pop up in a new window.Then you hit your 'back' arrow to come back.)

Just a simple impromptu bouquet of whatever was blooming at the moment, with my trusty Felco pruner and a backdrop of my canvas chair-in-a-bag. It must have been early enough for the lilac to still be in bloom, I also see calendula, signet marigolds, yarrow, and is that mint? A memory of June! Ahh!

In the Victorian custom of attaching meaning and message to the gift of a bouquet or "tussie mussie", this little bouquet has the hidden meaning of Joy (calendula), Refreshment (mint), Health (yarrow), and Grief (WAH!?!), although alternate lists of floral meanings might also interpret this little bouquet as Sadness or Hopelessness (calendula) and Virtue and Warm Sentiments (mint). I only checked four books and didn't find lilac's significance, but I'm sure there is some master list out there that some scholar has compiled for the truly serious meaningful posie giver where we could find lilac's message.

Here is a winter diversion: find a photo of a combination of flowers that you like and determine the meaning. Or, design a herb and flower garden with a message.
The question came up at the Master Gardener meeting last week on how to find gardening books at a reasonable price. My gardening bookshelf bears an embarrassment of riches - I've collected from thrift shops, charity resale stores (Goodwill), consignment shops, used book stores (Jellybeans), Border's markdown table and back when Borders had an outlet store nearby, yard sales (last year I got a deal from a Master Gardener who was downsizing), public library book sales, silent auctions at herb society and herb associates events, and freebies from friends. Thinking of all of those wonderful sources for my books and the pleasure I've had in getting to sit down with a new (to me) book uncovers a wealth of good memories.
You'd think I'd be smarter by now, wouldn't ya!

I've discovered Google Books

 About this book  Read this book "Little Gardens for Boys and Girls"  By Myrta Margaret Higgins
A charming bit of gardening advice for the children of 1910, found on page 57:
"Foxgloves and larkspurs are two of the best perennials to have. The foxglove is very thrifty and a great attraction to bees. The larkspur is so superior to many flowers, one can hardly look on its heavenly blue and not be good."

 About this book Read this bookLittle Gardens for Boys and Girls By Myrta Margaret Higgins

A gift for Grandmas with computers

Some link I followed a few days ago brought me to this neatest website called Lookybook! Online children's literature, YES!
If you're a grandma you know even the littlest children are familiar with computers in their homes and they watch "online content" the way we used to watch Lassie and Timmie on the tube. But we want them reading books too! We want our grandbabies in our arms, listening to our voices reading to them, turning pages to see colorful pictures that we can pause to discuss and appreciate.
Lookybook is for us.
Here's a sample - sign up for free, find books you like and put them on your own virtual bookshelf, for next time the grandbabies come over.

The Story Goes On
Written by Aileen Fisher | Illustrated by Mique Moriuchi
8 x 11 | 32 pages | Ages 4-8 | Roaring Brook Press | Published in 2005 | ISBN 9781596430372
In this exquisitely illustrated picture book, one of America's foremost poets for young people describes the ongoing cycle of life.

Go ahead, click on the book, turn the pages, see what fun it is!