This book is a laugh a minute. Being a city person, I attempted to read this on the train, only to be greeted by strange looks from people sitting next to me as I laughed.

Green Grows tells the story of the ultimate "problem" garden, as can only be told by the highbrow, snobbish Beverley Nichols. It was a "problem" only because Beverley wouldn't let good enough alone. He had to have the perfect garden. While never actually getting his hands dirty, we stand beside him as he explores ways to shape his triangular back garden, install a domed greenhouse, deal with new neighbors, and still manage to take care of his cats.

In Beverley's world, turning his garden into something beautiful, despite its awkward shape, is the most important thing in the world. He spares no expense and calls his contractor in at all hours, as well as making his gardener plant and move shrubs several times...as if he were arranging pictures on a wall. All this despite the fact that a war was about to begin...didn't matter a lick to him.

Additionally comic is his relationship with his neighbor down the street. In a classic Nichols fashion, he again is vexed with the nosey neighbor. His interaction with her is an additional bonus to the reader. This book is priceless.

A lovely, funny, informative book for anyone who loves to design gardens or just likes to enjoy them. As he tells you the story of his home in the city, Mr. Nichols weaves in information and ideas he creates to make a wonderful garden in a difficult space. Even without the garden element, he's a warm, insightful, funny observer of human nature.

I've read the Nichols' trilogy ('Merry Hall', 'Sunlight on the Lawn', 'Laughter on the Stairs') and recommmend them all, but I enjoyed this one the most. Maybe that's because I live in an urban area, have a small odd-shaped yard, a cat and two dogs, and nutty neighbors. I'm always looking for ways to make my garden more private, overcome awkward features, and squeeze in more and more plants. This little book is a 'history' of how Nichols accomplished just that. He took an odd shaped city lot and turned it into a pretty little garden overcoming all sorts of obstacles including a very nosy neighbor. As I read this book, I kept thinking why leave--even if the move was to Merry Hall. I suppose a gardener can only arrange and dig up the yard so many times before the need to seek new ground arises. If you want some ideas about how to deal with your little urban plot until you move to your country estate, read this book. It's filled with cats, friends, flowers and laughter, and a great read before bedtime.

A Harvest of Relections continues the "journey" with themes tied to nature, love and life beyong death. We learn more about the author's relationship with his mother and more about how love never dies. This book offered me more comfort as I reflected on the death of my own mother. My eyes read the words with joy and my heart was touched.

I liked the book and it was inspiring. I would recommend it to all who love the different seasons .I also like the personal stories that the author revealed in his telling of common life.

This book warmed my heart and would be the perfect gift book for just about everyone on my list, in that it covers so much different territory. Rarely do I like the follow up effort by an author more than the first. I loved My Garden Visits by Matott, but I think I loved this even more!

I purchased this book when I was in Art college over ten years ago. Sara abilility to capture her interest with her illustrative talent is amazing . It is definately the most interesting book I ever read without seeing typesetting, but with her beautifully hand painted type.

What an enchantingly beautiful book! This is one of my favorite books, and I love giving it as a gift to gentle souls. If you like gardens, watercolor paintings, and calligraphy, you will love this beautifully bound book that is filled with Sara Midda's exquisite watercolors. Each page is a miniature painting of breathtaking intricacy and delicacy celebrating the myriad forms of gardens, flowers, vegetables, and herbs in which we delight. The book is filled with boundless garden wisdom, recipes, and poems, all charmingly set forth in Sara Midda's beautiful calligraphy. You have to see this book to know how beautiful and inspirational a gem it is!

I've gone through this book again and again. I think whoever like calligraphy, water color painting and gardening would love this book. Although it's quite difficult to concentrate on the attennuated of water color written content. But it strongly inspires me to grasp by brushes and calligrpahy pens again. It becomes one of my possessive books and always added in my bag wherever I go since then.

I love this cookbook! Right now my garden is full to overflowing with ripening veggies and for the last few years that I've had this cookbook, I've worn it out this time of year. Why do I love it? The recipes have proven to be very reliable and by that I mean that every recipe I've tried from it has not needed much if any 'fine tuning' and the results have been consistently terrific.

I hate it when a cookbook includes too many exotic ingredients that are hard to find in my very rural area, and the only thing I've found difficult to obtain that this book calls for is white wine vinegar. I've solved that problem by asking the nearest grocer to order a case for me! I use so many of the recipes in this book that I'll easily use a case in a year or two.

Favorites from the book? The Szechuan Vegetable pickle recipe that lets me take a variety of our produce and layer them together with a simple salt/water/spices mixture, leave at room temp and then store in refrigerator. They get better and better and are super served as a side dish with rice.

I've also got to give rave reviews to the fruit pickle recipes. The sweetness and depth of flavor of the pickled pears and other fruit are a real treat to add to holiday meals. I just harvested lots of winter squash and will begin making the sweet pickled pumpkin and squash recipe today. Pickling and preserving are truly fulfilling acts and thanks to this great book, they are also easy and delicious.

If you've never pickled anything, this book won't confuse you with anything but the simple basics of preserving. If you are a seasoned preserver, you'll find some wonderful new ways to keep that harvest.

This is a great book for new pickling ideas, and the quantities are reasonable for trying new things out (you dont need bushels and buckets for most of them. The blueberry preserves and pickles are great, peach chutney is wonderful, and the asparagus is now a family favorite. The home made catsup is a bit of work, but worth it.

Linda has brought a wonderful variety of pickling recipes from around the world together in one book. The latest USDA pocedures and processes are used and described in great detail. Which I think is just wonderful. From reading her little notes on these recipes you just know she has tried these recipes her self and you just can't wait to try them out. Just thinking about my next project gets my mouth watering. This is a must have in the preserving kitchen.

This journal compiles amazing photographs of one of America's most envied gardens. It's layout is outstandingly useful for gardners and admirers alike. A "perfect" gift!!! Two thumbs up for its editors.

The perfect hostess gift! This beautiful journal is timeless and inspirational to those of us who struggle in the "green thumb" area! The photographs are beautifully done and the line drawings are beyond compare. A real treasure!!

This book makes everyone want to have a green thumb! Just looking at this beautiful book sitting on my desk makes me want to spend all day in my garden. The photographs are exquisite and the drawings are beyond compare. Marie Aull's garden is a work of art, a very special place, a garden that every gardener aspires to!

The monks of the middle ages can be heard singing Ave Maria, Ave Maria from the glossy, A. Joseph Barrish, S. M. illustrated pages of the St. Martha Parish-Wide Bulletin Book Club December Selection. Barrish, working with Schoenstatt Sister of Mary, M. Jean Frisk, has created a brilliant reminiscence of the time of incense and flowers in the Roman Catholic Church. Frisk, who holds a masters in Theology with Marian Concentration and a Licentiate in Sacred Theology, gives us legends and meditations to ponder as we look at Barrish's stunning, full-page illustrations of dozens of flowers that bear a name or a mythical relationship to the Mother of Christ.
This selection leads us through our shared Christian spirituality in the natural beauty around us through a history of flower legends and names using flowers of the Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, Presentation, Flight into Egypt, Maternity of Mary, Mary as Homemaker, Mary at the Cross, and Devotion Rewarded.
Among the legends told in mystery plays of the medieval times is that of Madelon who having nothing to give the Babe Jesus was led by the Angel Gabriel to roses blooming at the girl's feet. "The French poet, Emile Blemont, ended his story of Madelon with this quotation: Though thou art poor and hast no gold to bring, Though ice-bound earth no Heaven-sent flowers bestows, Yet give thy heart this Noel to thy King. This is the Legend of the Christmas Rose." (p. 48)
In addition to an excellent appendix, index, and bibliography of gardens and plant listings, this book also is a personal Mary Garden planner. Just in time for Chistmas gift exchanges to allow you to give more knowledge of Faith in a vibrant, beautiful, and interesting way. This quality publication gives artistically, as Christian art has, to those who enjoy studying the nobility of the world around them, as well as to those who plant gardens! (St. Martha, Okemos, Michigan Foundations in Adult Education, Fr. Jon Wehrle, Pastor)

why cant you make this book cheeper or at the same price this book is called mary's flowers, please if you want more people to by your books make them cheeper!

An inspiring book for gardeners who til their soil this spring. I plan to replant a section of my garden because of this book. I will devote this land to Mary and St. Francis...

This is the most complete reference I have in my collection of garden books. I have yet to find a plant variety that is not in this book. Truly a "must have" for any gardener.

One of the first books I reach for when I feel I need to look something up. Good for beginners and hardy gardening veterans.

Contains a plant encyclopedia with botanical names. Detailed Climate zone maps and climate descriptions. Does not use USDA zones but a more thorough and detailed zoning system. All zones are described in detail. Zoning includes southern regions of Canada (very useful) but not all of it. (If you live in the northern portion of the provinces you will be disappointed it's not truly for Canada like it claims.) The only thing I wish for are Latitude and Longitude lines on the zone maps.

Also contains: Plant selection guide, Pest and disease reference, Botanical name guide and a gardening dictionary all of which are well explained for beginners.

One of the best of the many general gardening books available that I've picked up. Very handy if you move around quite a bit.

Essential for anyone who starts out, as well as for the one who knows a bit about flora and fauna and how to bring colour, fragrance and life to his/her home and garden. Thoroughly recommended by one who did not know a toss about gardens but can now actually dabble with an Adenium Obesum in the home!

This dieters cookbook is great! There is a picture on every page and the recipes are easy to follow. There are many traditional recipes, just made lighter as well as a mix of the not so traditional. The garlic spinach dip recipe is the best.

i love this cookbook... the recipes are easy to make and VERY tasty... i have also easily been able to modify some to fit my family's taste.... and it's not just for dieters... just eating better.

I have used this cookbook for years now and it's nearly falling apart from overuse! In addition to interesting, healthy recipes there are many for "basics" re-created with healthier eating in mind. Pancakes, blueberry muffins, apple pies, cornbread, meatloaf, chicken salad, pudding, tetrazini and other such foods can be found amid the more adventurous recipes. We also love that there are many international flavors and a wide variety of tastes presented. The picture of each recipe is a big help as is the nutritional info. You won't believe how delicious these recipes are and the word "diet" will be far from your mind as you cook from this book!

The book paints a very perceptive picture of pre-revolution Iran through the eyes of a sensitive upper class house-wife and a left wing radical. The love story though poignant is almost incidental.This novel has resonances in many countries of the region both in the Middle East and Asia of that period. The author has done an outstanding job. In the walled garden( or is it pairi daeza?) is a book difficult to put down.

"Exile is its own country," Anahita Firouz write in this, her debut novel. Set in the brewing years of the Iranian revolution, it follows two people's lives, Mahastee and Reza, friends as children, who have now been inextricably tied in to the politics of their land. Warning to all who may have a mistaken view of where this is going: this novel is definitely not a love story! It is much more about the history of a place, and its people, about how much we can and cannot control our own destinies.

Reading this novel you can almost feel the wind rush off the Alborz mountains, feel the sense of impending doom that is about to crash down on these characters and their countryside. While it takes a few chapters to get truly involved in their story, you'll find it hard to put down once you are. And believe me, it's worth it...this book as the most heartbreakingly realistic ending I have ever read.

I've read several novels that are set against the backdrop of the Iranian revolution, and typically they're characterized by straightforward good vs. bad mentalities, and in the end, the two protagonists always end up in each others' arms. Not so with this masterpiece by Firouz. Don't be fooled by some of the editorial reviews and book jacket comments...this is not a romance. It's more a story of exile, of what happens when a country's politics end up shutting out an entire generation of people. And that's the book's power and beauty.

Mahastee and Reza are both smart enough to recognize that ultimately they have chosen their fates, and to realize that whatever they might do, by virtue of social class, revolutionary association, etc., their fates are now out of their hands. It's what makes this book profound and tragic, and ultimately, the most realistic book you'll ever read about 1979 Iran.

I only want to touch a little bit on what this fine book has to say about growing mushrooms, which is surprisingly little; out of 21 chapters, only one is about growing shrooms, the rest are for growing weed. The cultivation techniques are simple and effective, but taken nearly verbatim from...., which in turn was an adaptation of the techniques by Oss and Oeric in the Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide, I believe. Buy this book if growing shrooms is an afterthought to lessening your chances of being caught growing marijuana, for that is where the author earns your money. Mr. Bunch is obviously knowledgeable about growing high-quality, clandestine weed, and is also very fun to read, but unfortunately he is little more than a novice mycologist. I highly recommend this book to anyone intending to cultivate marijuana, but for those intending to grow psilocybe mushrooms, I must refer you to the Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide and the Mushroom Cultivator, by Stamets and Chilton.

If you ever wanted to grow your own treez or mushrooms, this is the book for you. Put it in the bathroom and read it when you have some time - worked for me!

This is a brilliant very informative book ,it is set out in such a way that it is very easy to read and follow the techniques used.It explains how to grow marijuana and mushrooms and other more interesting information very well with everything you need to know.This is definately the best book i have read on how to grow mushrooms ever guarenteed, as all of the other books i have read on this subject have been to confusing to follow or not informative enough and therefore this is the only book on that subject alone with the marajuana growing also as good.