Spring Blossoms


Book Description

Spring is in the air—and in the trees! Spring is here, and with the new season come trees full of life, color. . .and blossoms! From the creators of Leaf Jumpers and Winter Trees, Spring Blossoms introduces readers to a variety of different flowering trees. During a stroll through the forest, two children come across the small and white flowers on a crab apple tree, the rich, red buds on a red maple, and many more. Along the way, readers learn that some trees have both male and female flowers—each with a distinctive appearance. Back matter includes extended botanical facts and more information about trees and their life cycles. Told in lyrical rhymes with beautiful linoleum-cut illustrations, Spring Blossoms offers a unique blend of science, poetry, and art studies.




Gardening with Foliage First


Book Description

Create a foliage-driven garden that dazzles! Although seductive, flowers, by their fleeting nature, are a fickle base to provide long-lasting gardens with year-round interest. Tackle this problem with the advice in Gardening with Foliage First. Learn how to first build a framework of foliage and then layer in flowers and other artistic elements as the finishing touches. This simple, recipe-style approach to garden design features 127 combinations for both sunny and shady gardens that work for a variety of climates and garden challenges.







Martha's Flowers


Book Description

The essential resource from Martha Stewart, with expert advice and lessons on gardening and making the most of your spectacular blooms Martha Stewart's lifelong love of flowers began at a young age, as she dug in and planted alongside her father in their family garden, growing healthy, beautiful blooms, every year. The indispensable lessons she learned then--and those she has since picked up from master gardeners--form the best practices she applies to her voluminous flower gardens today. For the first time, she compiles the wisdom of a lifetime spent gardening into a practical yet inspired book. Learn how and when to plant, nurture, and at the perfect time, cut from your garden. With lush blooms in hand, discover how to build stunning arrangements. Accompanied by beautiful photographs of displays in Martha's home, bursting with ideas, and covering every step from seed to vase, Martha's Flowers is a must-have handbook for flower gardeners and enthusiasts of all skill levels.




For the Love of Apricots


Book Description

Today the Santa Clara Valley is known as the Silicon Valley. However, not so long ago it was called the "Valley of Heart's Delight". Lisa Prince Newman grew up in that special time and place, among the fruit and nut orchards that surrounded her home town of Saratoga. She discovered her love for baking with the bounty of fruit ripening just outside her family's kitchen door. Lisa's passion for apricots fills this book with recipes that showcase the singular flavor and surprising versatility of the California apricot. Deeply influenced by the Santa Clara Valley's natural beauty and agricultural heritage, Lisa celebrates the apricot, its people, and its history in this very personal cookbook. For the Love of Apricots showcases 68 recipes from Breakfast to Cocktails that show you how to enjoy apricots throughout the year. A unique cookbook/memoir, For the Love of Apricots is a tribute to the orchardists and farmers who continue to grow California's most wonderful fruit.




An Appalachian Summer


Book Description

In 1933 Louisville, Kentucky, even the ongoing economic depression cannot keep Piper Danson's parents from insisting on a debut party. After all, their fortune came through the market crash intact, and they've picked out the perfect suitor for their daughter. Braxton Crandall can give her the kind of life she's used to. The only problem? This is not the man--or the life--she really wants. When Piper gets the opportunity to volunteer as a horseback Frontier Nursing courier in the Appalachian Mountains for the summer, she jumps at the chance to be something other than a dutiful daughter or a kept wife in a loveless marriage. The work is taxing, the scenery jaw-droppingly gorgeous, and the people she meets along the way open up a whole new world to her. The longer she stays, the more an advantageous marriage slips from her grasp. But something much more precious--true love--is drawing ever closer. Bestselling author Ann H. Gabhart invites you into the storied hills of Eastern Kentucky to discover what happens when one intrepid young woman steps away from the restrictive past into a beautiful, wide-open future.




A Gardener's Guide to Frost


Book Description

He visits thousands of gardeners each year. Some of them see him coming, others are caught by surprise. Far too many never recover. His name is Jack Frost -- and he's coming soon to a garden near you. A Gardener's Guide to Frost is packed with practical advice that every gardener can put to use each summer. Readers will learn to look at their gardens the way Jack Frost does so they can keep their gardens thriving despite his icy visits. The clear, easy-to-understand explanations come from someone with dirt under his fingernails, and the book includes helpful tables and other resources, including a handy chart listing the frost tolerance of common garden vegetables. Readers will also meet some gardeners who have devised ways to keep on gardening right past fall frosts and into winter. For all its practical advice, however, this book doesn't present Jack Frost as some sort of villain who spoils our all-too-short gardening seasons. Rather, it explains how we can learn to garden with frost -- even embracing it as a friend who helps us slow down and appreciate the beautiful and fleeting gifts of gardening. Book jacket.







Growing Figs in Cold Climates


Book Description

From Minnesota to Moscow — how to grow fresh figs in cold climates Growing Figs in Cold Climates is a complete, full-color, illustrated guide to organic methods for growing delicious figs in cold climates, well outside the traditional hot, arid home of this ancient fruiting tree. Coverage includes: Five methods for growing figs in cold climates including overwintering Cultivar selection for cool and cold climates Pruning techniques for a variety of methods of growing figs in cold climates Pest problems and solutions Harvesting, including ways to speed ripening, identify ripe fruit, and manage an overabundance Small-scale commercial fig production in cold climates. Fresh figs are juicy, full-bodied, and filled with a honey-sweet flavor, and because truly ripe figs are highly perishable, they are only available to those who grow their own. By choosing the right cultivars and techniques, figs can be grown across cool and cold growing zones of North America, Europe, and beyond, putting them within reach of almost every gardener. Easy and delicious — if you can grow a houseplant, you can grow a fig.