The cool weather of late is making me plum loco for the seasons to finally change and winter move on.
In the meantime, here are some new books to keep us all occupied and maybe prevent us from going stir crazy or getting cabin fever.
If you can hardly wait until you can get your hands on some dirt and begin playing for the summer, then come check out some of our new gardening books such as Pruning trees, shrubs and climbers, hedges, roses, flowers and topiary by Richard Bird. Take advantage of the extra time until the trees are budding to get your shrubs and such in shape. Vegetables, herbs and fruit: an illustrated encyclopedia by Matthew Biggs and others is a definitive sourcebook to growing, harvesting, preserving and cooking.
Maybe you’d just prefer to read about gardens. Beautiful Madness by James Dodson is a journey through a year of green thumb fever as Mr. Dodson shares his mania for gardening. He travels to gardening shows in London and Philadelphia, hangs off a cliff in the South African rain forest to find new and exotic plant species as well as encounter high rollers who bid top dollar at rare plant auctions. And while the pace is a bit slower, Days on the Family Farm by Carrie Meyer, is no less riveting. Culled from the daily chronicle kept by farmwife May Lyford Davis, is a look at farming from the golden age through the Great Depression.
And maybe you just want to escape, escape into a new hobby. Get a Hobby by Tina Barseghian contains information about 101 all-consuming diversions for any lifestyle, including a quiz to determine your hobby personality. Discover the basics from pottery to falconry to storm chasing.
You can also escape in South to Alaska by Nancy Owens Barnes as she retells her father’s journey from landlocked Oklahoma and Arkansas to the wild Alaskan shore. Or maybe you want to journey to your own fishing shack with Le Shack: a very special fishing place by Jim C. Chapralis and compare notes as a dozen anglers share their experiences fishing and residing at the shack.
And if you prefer your reading to not tangle too closely with reality then try Mermaids in the basement by Michael Lee West. Renata DeChavannes seeks to “stop feeling like a wilted gardenia and everge as the unstoppable kudzu” her grandmother said she would be. And while your waiting to stop feeling frozen as opposed to wilted try Every Last Cuckoo by Kate Maloy which is a tender story about love lasting. And I will admit that I picked this book up because of the cover. The dishes displayed on the cover are bright and grabbed me and then the story kept me going from the first page to the last. Another tale of coming to terms with the end of life and letting go is The Fiction Class by Susan Breen, told from the daughter’s perspective.