Reading, Writing & Pondering

Have you ever grown a plant from seed? If you have, you know that it takes a little time to sprout, grow up tall, and produce either fruit or flowers. In Gracie's Garden by Lara Casey, we join Gracie, Joshua, and Sarah to see what they do while they wait for the garden seeds to grow. Gracie's Garden is a fun book teaching children about growing tomatoes and other things in the garden. The children learn how it takes time for a seed to grow but it is worth it in the end. Actually, it is more than worth it, the children see that miracles abound when seeds grow and the children follow the growth of a seed from planting to harvesting. Both the story and the illustrations are both beautiful and fun in this book. Gracie's Garden is written for children ages four to eight. If readers have the internet, there is an on-line activity book included with this purchase that is free for download. Also, on the backside of the dust jacket is a Garden Giggles poster that is fun for youn...

Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover. The cover of Devotions from the Garden is simply beautiful and restful looking. I just want to walk into the garden pictured and have a seat on the swing, rest and look at the beauty and commune with God. The subtitle is "Finding Peace and Rest from Your Hurried Life." This book could help you do just that. Devotions from the Garden offers beautiful garden pictures to look at along with meditations on God's Word beginning with a Bible verse and ending with a prayer. This is not a dated book so the reader can start at the beginning or could start anywhere and read what you feel led to read among these 90 devotions. Readings draw parallels between life and gardening. Gentle relationships between the Christian life and various aspects of gardening offers a lovely reading for each day with both hopes and challenges being addressed. Just about any area of gardening is related to life. A few examples include: the root system, ...

 The New American Herbal is described on the back cover as 'a masterful A-to -Z introduction to the full spectrum of herbal plants." This beautiful book, authored by Stephen Orr, would be a great addition to any gardener, cook or crafter's library. The New American Herbal is an eye feast of beautiful photographs of foods made with herbs, herbs in the garden and other ways to preserve and use herbs. I thought this book offered sound advice and sage wisdom on growing herbs and using them. Each herb detailed in the book has a side bar listed with the most basic information such as where it is grown, how to grow, how tall it gets and other basics to growing any herb. Herbs include the every day herbs we all know like oregano, parsley and tarragon, as well as those not as well known, such as lungwort, epazote and sweet cicely. I thought several recipes in the book looked appealing to try. Recipes such as: Baked Stuffed Tomatoes with Oregano, Braised Chicken with Tarrago...

Georgia Pellegrini says self-sufficiency is the ultimate girl power. I agree. Modern Pioneering makes self-sufficiency a little easier with step-by-step instructions on how to  do everything from  grow a small space garden to crafting mason jar lanterns to fermenting cabbage into hot pink saurkraut. Modern Pioneering is divided into sections: The Garden, The Home, The Wild and The Rest. The garden section includes information on tools that you need to garden, selecting a garden spot and saving seeds, along with a lot more. It offers a lot of basic information that would be helpful to any beginning gardener. As a more experienced gardener, I already knew quite a bit of the information the gardening information. However, I think the section with recipes offers great recipes for both those who have experience and those with none. Some of the recipes include: Fig and Quinoa Salad, pink pickled eggs, chocolate bread pudding, mint jelly and salmon in a jar. The Wild section off...

Two days ago it was 90 degrees. . .but I loved it! My summer garden plants were all happy and thriving. . .tomatoes, peppers, watermelon, Swiss chard, and more. . .then came last night. Plants are covered with blankets and frost warnings abounded. Freeze warning were even issued for the counties North of us. . .Soon it won't be just a night of warning, we will have a killing frost. . . I know a lot of people in the Midwest that are fans of winter. . .I'm just not one of them. I love being able to walk out back to my garden and pick raspberries, blackberries, green beans and other goodies. Once garden season is over, we have potatoes and sweet potatoes stored in our basement to eat up through the season. Usually I get a few squash too from someone else although we don't raise them. I have canned jam, tomatoes, pickled green beans, vegetable soup and the like. We have a freezer full of Iowa sweet corn, more tomatoes, more green beans, asparagus and whatever else I can come ...