Waterlilies and Lotuses


Book Description

In this fully updated work, Perry Slocum describes nearly 500 species and cultivars of the crowning jewels of water gardens, the waterlilies and lotuses. This book includes more than 130 of the best new hybrids introduced since the landmark Water Gardening: Water Lilies and Lotuses by Perry Slocum and Peter Robinson was published. All species and the major cultivars, including day- and night-blooming tropical and hardy waterlilies and lotuses, are described along with the author's and hybridizers' comments on the best landscape uses for each plant. Although the genera Nymphaea and Nelumbo receive special emphasis, a chapter is also devoted to the other genera in the waterlily family, Nuphar, Victoria, Euryale, Barclaya, and Ondinea. In addition to his achievements as a hybridizer, Slocum is an award-winning nature photographer. Waterlilies and Lotuses is illustrated with 350 stunning color photographs of these exotic beauties, with more than 100 photos published here for the first time. With information on hardiness, including maps for Europe and the United States, and an extensive list of suppliers of water gardening plants and equipment in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, Waterlilies and Lotuses is a truly definitive resource for water gardeners the world over.




Finding Our Way Home


Book Description

In this time of ecological crisis, all that is holy calls us into a more intimate partnership with the diverse and beautiful beings of this earth. In Finding Our Way Home, Myke Johnson reflects on her personal journey into such a partnership and offers a guide for others to begin this path. Lyrically expressed, it weaves together lessons from a chamomile flower, a small bird, a copper beech tree, a garden slug, and a forest fern, along with insights from Indigenous philosophy, environmental science, fractal geometry, childhood Catholic mysticism, the prophet Elijah, fairy tales, and permaculture design. This eco-spiritual journey also wrestles with the history of our society's destruction of the natural world, and its roots in the original theft of the land from Indigenous peoples. Exploring the spiritual dimensions of our brokenness, it offers tools to create healing. Finding Our Way Home is a ceremony to remember our essential unity with all of life.




The Lotus Born for the Young at Heart


Book Description

Shortly after the Buddha passed into nirvana, a water fairy from the Lake of the Hidden Treasure witnesses the birth of an Indian hero, Padmasambhava, who is born in a giant lotus in the middle of her lake. He incarnates to help carry on the Buddhas teachings. Something happens that inspires her to follow him on all his adventures, and she is able to tell his story from her unique perspective. King Ja discovers Padmasambhava, known affectionately as Pema, and carries him back to his palace, believing that his prayers for a son have been finally answered. A twist of fate leads Pema to the terrifying Chilly Grove Cemetery, where he develops his meditation skills and transcends many physical challenges. When the water fairy convinces him to revisit his birthplace at the Lake of the Hidden Treasure, Pema returns to teach the fairies and gnomes the secret to true happiness. Pemas loving kindness magnetizes the nature spirits to serve him devotedly, and with their magic, they assist him in his quest to spread Buddhas message to the people of India and Tibet. The fairy shares Pemas adventures with Mandarava, Emperor Ashok, Vajrakilaya, Yeshe Tsogyal, Emperor Trisong Deutsen, and the nature spirits of Tibet. Pema is a Buddhist saint who befriends the nature spirits with his sincere reverence for the unseen work they do in balancing the earth, air, water, fire, and space within Mother Nature. He is aware that good-hearted humans must guide the spirits of nature by giving them loving attentionor else undivine forces can take them over and create chaos. The water fairy tells the significant events of Padmasambhavas life with the vivid detail of one who flew wherever he walked, and she shares his profound wisdom with charming simplicity.




Flowers Blooming on a Withered Tree


Book Description

This book provides a translation and critical bilingual edition on the Verse Comments on the Treasury of the True Dharma Eye. The Verse Comments by Giun (1253-1333), the fifth abbot of Eiheiji temple, is an important early medieval Japanese commentary on the 60-chapter edition of the Treasury of the True Dharma Eye (Shobogenzo), one of the main versions of the masterwork written by Eihei Dogen (1200-1253), the founder of the Soto Zen sect in Japan who established Eiheiji in the mid-1240s. Giun's Verse Comments was one of only two commentaries of the Treasury written during the Kamakura era, with the other being a prose analysis of the 75-chapter edition, called Prose Comments on the Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, often abbreviated to Distinguished Comments (Gosho). While Distinguished Comments fell into disuse rather quickly and was only revived nearly three hundred years later, the Verse Comments was circulated widely from the time of its composition and read by many Soto monks over the next couple of centuries. Offering poems and cryptic expressions that seek to capture the spiritual flavor and essential meaning of Dogen's thought as suggested in each chapter, the Verse Comments is crucial for understanding how Dogen's Treasury was received and appropriated in the religious and literary context of medieval Japan. In this book, Steven Heine's careful interpretations, historical investigations, and theoretical reflections demonstrate the significance of Giun's writings in light of the history of pre-modern and modern commentaries on Dogen's masterwork, the Treasury of the True Dharma Eye.




Monk in the Mountain


Book Description

:Monk in the Mountain provides direct access to the Spiritual Heart of genuine Samana (One who is walking the Path to the end of the world). The reader can access the Insight immediately and directly as Ajahn Sumano is someone just like you. The only difference is that he no longer believes that the pleasures of the world are all there is to this life. His process is everyone's process: the obligation to know who we are, to get one's priorities right, to sacrifice a little for the possibility of a lot. Ajahn Sumano took himself to where there was only he and his mind and challenged the mind to continue to deceive him, if it dared. The deception ended.




The Lotus Dickey Songbook


Book Description

Long-awaited new edition of the songs of a legendary Hoosier musician, including a CD.




Transfarmation


Book Description

The story of factory farmers, rescued farm animals, and rural communities standing up to big corporations and constructing their own new world that will change the way we eat In Transfarmation, president and CEO of Mercy For Animals Leah Garcés explains how food and farming policies have failed over decades and offers insights into the wave of change coming from a new crop of farmers and communities who are constructing a humane and sustainable farming system. Factory animal farming faces an abundance of issues—from environmental concerns and animal cruelty, to exploited farmers and poor working conditions—and more and more farmers are searching for a way out and for a new start. Using insights from interviews and fieldwork, Garcés shares the perspectives of three groups: —Farmers—such as the Halley farm, where a family crushed by chicken factory farming builds a new way by transitioning their farm to growing hemp and rescuing dogs. —Animals—like Norma, an industrial dairy cow who was sentenced to death after injuring a worker in an effort to protect her calf. —Farm communities—including stories like how the hog industry in North Carolina preys on historically Black communities by contaminating the air and water for decades with hog pollution. Garcés demonstrates the reasons why we must end factory farming and calls on readers to imagine a future world where Transfarmation is complete and we have transitioned to a just food and farming system.




Vick's Magazine


Book Description




Garden and Forest


Book Description

A journal of horticulture, landscape art, and forestry.