War Gardens

War Gardens

Author: Lalage Snow

Publisher:

Published: 2019-05-28

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 9781787470712

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A journey through the most unlikely of gardens: the oases of peace people create in the midst of war. In this millennium, we have become war weary. From Afghanistan to Iraq, from Ukraine to South Sudan and Syria, from Kashmir to the West Bank, conflict is as contagious and poisonous as Japanese knotweed. Living through it are people just like us with ordinary jobs, ordinary pressures and ordinary lives. Against a new landscape of horror and violence it is up to them to maintain a modicum of normality and colour. For some, gardening is the way to achieve this. Working in the world's most dangerous war zones, freelance war correspondent and photographer Lally Snow has often chanced across a very moving sight, a testimony to the triumph of the human spirit in adversity, a celebration of hope and beauty: a war garden. In Kabul, the royal gardens are tended by a centenarian gardener, though the king is long gone; in Camp Bastion, bored soldiers improvise tiny gardens to give themselves a moment's peace; on both sides of the dividing line in Jerusalem families tend groves of olives and raise beautiful plants from the unforgiving, disputed landscape; in Ukraine, families tend their gardens in the middle of a surreal, frozen war. War Gardens is a surprising, tragic and beautiful journey through the darkest places of the modern world, revealing the ways people make time and space for themselves and for nature even in the middle of destruction.


My Garden (Book)

My Garden (Book)

Author: Jamaica Kincaid

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2001-05-15

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 1466828749

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One of our finest writers on one of her greatest loves. Jamaica Kincaid's first garden in Vermont was a plot in the middle of her front lawn. There, to the consternation of more experienced friends, she planted only seeds of the flowers she liked best. In My Garden (Book) she gathers all she loves about gardening and plants, and examines it generously, passionately, and with sharp, idiosyncratic discrimination. Kincaid's affections are matched in intensity only by her dislikes. She loves spring and summer but cannot bring herself to love winter, for it hides the garden. She adores the rhododendron Jane Grant, and appreciates ordinary Blue Lake string beans, but abhors the Asiatic lily. The sources of her inspiration -- seed catalogues, the gardener Gertrude Jekyll, gardens like Monet's at Giverny -- are subjected to intense scrutiny. She also examines the idea of the garden on Antigua, where she grew up. My Garden (Book) is an intimate, playful, and penetrating book on gardens, the plants that fill them, and the persons who tend them.


Plantiful

Plantiful

Author: Kristin Green

Publisher: Timber Press

Published: 2014-01-28

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1604693878

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Presents simple lessons on propagating plants, providing plant profiles for self-sowing plants, spreaders, and plants that overwinter, and includes additional gardening tips and design ideas.


Beating Guns

Beating Guns

Author: Shane Claiborne

Publisher: Brazos Press

Published: 2019-03-05

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 149341707X

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★ Publishers Weekly starred review Parkland. Las Vegas. Dallas. Orlando. San Bernardino. Paris. Charleston. Sutherland Springs. Newtown. These cities are now known for the people who were shot and killed in them. More Americans have died from guns in the US in the last fifty years than in all the wars in American history. With less than 5% of the world's population, the people of the US own nearly half the world's guns. America also has the most annual gun deaths--homicide, suicide, and accidental gun deaths--at 105 per day, or more than 38,000 per year. Some people say it's a heart problem. Others say it's a gun problem. The authors of Beating Guns believe it's both. This book is for people who believe the world doesn't have to be this way. Inspired by the prophetic image of beating swords into plows, Beating Guns provides a provocative look at gun violence in America and offers a clarion call to change our hearts regarding one of the most significant moral issues of our time. Bestselling author, speaker, and activist Shane Claiborne and Michael Martin show why Christians should be concerned about gun violence and how they can be part of the solution. The authors transcend stale rhetoric and old debates about gun control to offer a creative and productive response. Full-color images show how guns are being turned into tools and musical instruments across the nation. Charts, tables, and facts convey the mind-boggling realities of gun violence in America, but as the authors make clear, there is a story behind every statistic. Beating Guns allows victims and perpetrators of gun violence to tell their own compelling stories, offering hope for change and helping us reimagine the world as one that turns from death to life, where swords become plows and guns are turned into garden tools.


Lazy-Ass Gardening

Lazy-Ass Gardening

Author: Robert Kourik

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780961584870

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In this lively and inspiring book, veteran horticulturalist Robert Kourik (aka "Bob") unfolds his manifesto of "Inspired Laziness"--using efficiency and forethought to create gardens and landscapes with a lot less work and a lot more enjoyment. By following Kourik's relaxed and readable guidance, both beginning and accomplished gardeners will discover how to save time and money, enrich their soil, increase their yields, and reduce their effort, all while absorbing "Bob's" philosophy of kicking back and growing more good times. Drawing on over four decades of immersing himself in horticultural work (and writing about it), Robert shares his hard-won secrets for the easiest planning, planting, cultivating, landscaping, irrigating, de-pestifying, and finding enjoyment in settings ranging from window-box herbs to showy ornamental plantings to the now-classic "edible landscape." In Lazy-Ass Gardening, you'll learn how to: Ease into gardening, if you're a newbie. Figure out which edibles to raise, with a careful selection of the most care-free varieties and tips for easy growing. Lay out your garden to balance effective growing area with space for enjoyment, relaxation, and play. Cultivate creatively to grow your own nutrients and build healthy self-sustaining (no-till) soil for the future. Attract the best pollinating insects and deter hungry pests. Plan your "hardscape" (paths, patios, arbors, etc.), for an easy-care (and more fun) aspect of your yard or garden. Choose the right plants for your landscape, climate, soil, and water supply, not to mention your aesthetic and nutritional needs. Learn how to develop a personal garden that manifests your own eccentricities. Grow more, stress less.


Bleeding Out

Bleeding Out

Author: Thomas Abt

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2019-06-25

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 1541645715

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From a Harvard scholar and former Obama official, a powerful proposal for curtailing violent crime in America Urban violence is one of the most divisive and allegedly intractable issues of our time. But as Harvard scholar Thomas Abt shows in Bleeding Out, we actually possess all the tools necessary to stem violence in our cities. Coupling the latest social science with firsthand experience as a crime-fighter, Abt proposes a relentless focus on violence itself -- not drugs, gangs, or guns. Because violence is "sticky," clustering among small groups of people and places, it can be predicted and prevented using a series of smart-on-crime strategies that do not require new laws or big budgets. Bringing these strategies together, Abt offers a concrete, cost-effective plan to reduce homicides by over 50 percent in eight years, saving more than 12,000 lives nationally. Violence acts as a linchpin for urban poverty, so curbing such crime can unlock the untapped potential of our cities' most disadvantaged communities and help us to bridge the nation's larger economic and social divides. Urgent yet hopeful, Bleeding Out offers practical solutions to the national emergency of urban violence -- and challenges readers to demand action.


Urban Place

Urban Place

Author: Peggy F. Barlett

Publisher:

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13:

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Cross-disciplinary studies find that reconnections to place and to the natural world, which are emerging through urban sustainability efforts, build community and political action and have important medical and psychological health benefits.


A New Garden Ethic

A New Garden Ethic

Author: Benjamin Vogt

Publisher: New Society Publishers

Published: 2017-09-01

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 1771422459

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In a time of climate change and mass extinction, how we garden matters more than ever: “An outstanding and deeply passionate book.” —Marc Bekoff, author of The Emotional Lives of Animals Plenty of books tell home gardeners and professional landscape designers how to garden sustainably, what plants to use, and what resources to explore. Yet few examine why our urban wildlife gardens matter so much—not just for ourselves, but for the larger human and animal communities. Our landscapes push aside wildlife and in turn diminish our genetically programmed love for wildness. How can we get ourselves back into balance through gardens, to speak life's language and learn from other species? Benjamin Vogt addresses why we need a new garden ethic, and why we urgently need wildness in our daily lives—lives sequestered in buildings surrounded by monocultures of lawn and concrete that significantly harm our physical and mental health. He examines the psychological issues around climate change and mass extinction as a way to understand how we are short-circuiting our response to global crises, especially by not growing native plants in our gardens. Simply put, environmentalism is not political; it's social justice for all species marginalized today and for those facing extinction tomorrow. By thinking deeply and honestly about our built landscapes, we can create a compassionate activism that connects us more profoundly to nature and to one another.