Can you really have a productive garden without plowing, hoeing, weeding, cultivating, and all the other bothersome rituals that most gardeners suffer through every growing season? "Sure," says Ruth Stout, a prolific author and writer at 80 years young. The reason that Ruth can throw away her spade and hoe and do her gardening from a couch is a year-round mulch covering, 6 to 8 inches thick, that covers her garden like a blanket. Thousands of curious gardeners have visited her Redding, Connecticut garden, including university scientists and horticulture experts. The experts have been dazzled by the technique used by the queen of mulch! But the results of 41 years of gardening experience can't be denied. The Ruth Stout No-Work Gardening Book gives Ruth's unique advice on growing techniques and tells how she has escaped the bugaboos that haunt most gardeners. Her poison-free method of combating slugs and other insects, her scheme for growing tasty vegetables all year, her method of foiling both drought and frost -- these and many other growing secrets are revealed -- secrets that have brought this perky organic gardener season after season of growing pleasure. If you're tired of being a slave to your garden, yet still want to enjoy it without the bother of sprays, weeding, hoeing or other toilsome garden chores, The Ruth Stout No-Work Garden Books has the information you need. It's completely tested gardening method, perfected during more than 40 years experience and reported in the pages of Organic Gardening magazine, eliminates gardening strain and toil, and does it organically with no dangerous chemical fertilizers or toxic sprays. Take it easy. Put nature to work in your garden.
In Ruth Page: The Woman in the Work, the Chicago ballerina emerges as a highly original choreographer who, in her art, sought the iconoclastic as she transgressed boundaries of genre, gender, race, class, and sexuality. Author Joellen A. Meglin shows how her works were often controversial andsometimes censored even as she succeeded in roles usually reserved for men in the ballet world: choreographer, artistic director, and impresario.From extensive dramaturgical analysis of her most famous ballets - La Guiablesse, Frankie and Johnny, Billy Sunday, Revenge, The Merry Widow, Camille, Carmina Burana, and Alice - to embodied re-imagining of an avant-garde solo performed in a "sack" designed by Isamu Noguchi, this biography followsthe global reach of Ruth Page's career spanning the greater part of the twentieth century. In the process of discovering the woman in the work, it also offers encounters with an international cast of dancers (Anna Pavlova, Harald Kreutzberg, Frederic Franklin, Alicia Markova), composers (WilliamGrant Still, Aaron Copland, Jerome Moross, Darius Milhaud), visual artists (Noguchi, Pavel Tchelitchew, Antoni Clave), and companies (Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, Ballets des Champs-Elysees, London Festival Ballet). In doing so, it also disrupts notions that New York was the only cradle of theAmerican ballet, and George Balanchine, its exponent to eclipse all others, Ruth Page explores the woman's unique sensibility, corporeal praxis, and collaborative ethos to reveal her Chicago-centered network of creativity.
“For those of you—and your numbers are growing—gardening in drought-stricken parts of the country, The Bold Dry Garden will quench your thirst for inspiration.” —New York Times Book Review Ruth Bancroft is a dry gardening pioneer. Her lifelong love of plants led to the creation of one of the most acclaimed public gardens, The Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek, California. The Bold Dry Garden offers unparalleled access to the garden and the extraordinary woman responsible for it. In its stunningly photographed pages, you’ll discover the history of the garden and the design principles and plant palette that make it unique. Packed with growing and maintenance tips, profiles of signature plants for a dry garden, and innovative design techniques, The Bold Dry Garden has everything you need to create a garden that is lush, waterwise, and welcoming.
Sometimes the best gardening advice comes in tidbits shared over the backyard fence from a sage neighbor. In Vegetable Gardening Wisdom, master gardener Kelly Smith Trimble shares her tried-and-true ideas and guidance for finding success and enjoyment in every aspect of vegetable gardening. Presented in a lively, beautifully designed package that make a perfect gift and source for daily inspiration, Trimble invites readers to dip in regularly for bite-sized pieces of information on topics ranging from herb and vegetable gardening to cooking, preserving, and creative ways to use the harvest along with ideas for reducing garden and kitchen waste. Trimble suggests the best herbs to grow indoors, the best way to start peas, how to use lettuce as a living mulch in the garden, how to make compost tea, how to identify beneficial bugs, how to blanch cauliflower, and much more. Woven in among her 275 tips are 40 helpful and inspiring quotes from other plant-loving folks, ranging from novelist Jamaica Kincaid to vegetable gardening guru Ed Smith and renowned chef Sean Brock.
A leading Harvard psychiatrist reveals how our emotional lives are profoundly shaped by the seasons, and how to recognize our own seasonal patterns and milestones In two decades of psychiatry practice, John R. Sharp has worked with many people who experienced the same emotional distresses at specific times of the year—a young woman who became depressed before Thanksgiving, a middle-aged man who felt anxious about making his summer travel plans, people who made uncharacteristically extreme decisions as spring approached. In The Emotional Calendar, Sharp reveals how environmental, psychological, and cultural forces profoundly affect the way we feel, and how the enduring effects of personal anniversaries can influence our moods and behavior year after year. Sharp also illustrates a wide range of individual responses to cultural phenomena: some people feel anxious at the start of a new school year or are undone by the prospect of tax season while others are buoyed by the start of a sports season. Sharp shows us how to recognize the milestones on our own emotional calendars, providing guidance for how to break stifling patterns and remedy destructive moods. This empathetic and deeply resonant book will help readers reach an emotional balance for the years ahead.
A collection of gardening tips, recipes, crafts, gift ideas, tales, and more from the author of Every Garden Is a Story. Simple Pleasures of the Garden is a treasure chest of tips, how-to’s, stories, and trade secrets gathered together in one beautiful book. Organized by season, the hundreds of suggestions and recipes present a profusion of ways to celebrate the bounty of the Earth all year round. Projects include handcrafted lotions and oils, baskets and wreaths, potpourris and floral waters, along with dozens of simple, inexpensive home decorations and easy-to-prepare recipes that utilize all of your garden’s harvest. From compost tea to confetti corn chowder, Simple Pleasures of the Garden will inspire you to bestow the comforts and charms of your garden on family and friends.