Review: Taylor's Encylopedia of Garden Plants

Unlike other encyclopedias that become dated due to political, social and scientific changes, the Taylor's Encyclopedia of Garden Plants is sure to stand the test of time as probably the most complete and authoritative guide to ornamental flowers, trees and shrubs in North American gardens. The information in this text will be as accurate and as valuable at the end of this century as it is today. Its pages will yellow and its cover will wear out before there is much change in the nature of the 1,000 species covered here.

Continued in ... The Book Stall

Taylor's Encyclopedia of Garden Plants 

edited by Frances Tenenbaum  

Houghton Mifflin, 2003

Cover Art: Taylor's Encyclopedia of Garden Plants
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Review: Legends

The Legends series of books by the magazine Western Horseman, now numbering five volumes, collects biographical sketches of horses acclaimed for their speed, formation, or sire or production record by the American Quarter Horse Association.

Continued in ... Legends

Legends 

Outstanding Quarter Horse Stallions and Mares

edited by Pat Close 

Western Horseman Magazine, 2001-2010

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Artwork: Legends, Volume 8

Farm and Garden Picks: Tractors of the World

Tractors come in all different shapes and sizes, and Tractors of the World covers the field from the early steam-driven monsters to the traditional "two large, two small" wheel configuration; the Row Crop models with two small front wheels placed close together and two large rear wheels; and finally to the ultimate modern, four-wheel-drive, multi-geared, mega-beasts with GPS devices and on-board computers.

Tractors of the World

by Mirco de Cet

Arctrus Publishing, 2012

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Review: Christmas in the Old West

The "Old West" in this book is the 19th century, as it was lived in the Western states and territories of the rapidly expanding United States. It was a time of explorers and trailblazers, cowboys and cavalry, prospectors and outlaws, settlers and homesteaders.

Christmas in the Old West is a collection of heart-warming tales, memories, meals, news accounts, pictures and memorabilia of a time before television and electric lights and gas stoves.

Continued in ... Christmas in the Old West


Christmas in the Old West
A Historical Scrapbook
by Sam Travers
Mountain Press, 2003


Artwork: Christmas for the Men on the Trail by Charles M. Russell
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Review: Home Cheese Making

The notable primer on making cheese at home, Cheesemaking Made Easy, was revised and updated as Home Cheese Making with more recipes, profiles of cheesemakers, and sources for supplies and equipment.

Home cheesemaking can be a fun hobby or educational activity, or it can be a lucrative sideline for farmers market sales or even a steady business. While this book is intended for beginners, it includes recipes and instructions for taking the art to a commercial level.

Continued in ... Here's How To Make Cheese

Home Cheese Making 

by Ricki Carroll

Storey Publishing, 2002.

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The Nature Pages Review: Hunter's Log

The essence of autumn on the northern plains of America, and North Dakota in particular, is bagged and brought home in this collection of hunting poetry.

In a preface to his work, the poet explains that hunting has taught him accuracy of observation and, as a writer, accuracy of expression. Both skills are effectively employed in poems like "Missouri Breaks":

A blooded dog quarters the feral rye,
and my body's long quarrel with my mind
is silenced by a landscape and a sky
legible as a Bible for the blind.

Inspired by Ortega y Gassett's "Meditations on Hunting," gifted to him by his father, Timothy Murphy feels "the killing of the game is a ritual preparation for our own mortality." In "The Blind," the poet describes an outing with an aging father:

By some ancestral code
fathers and sons don't break,
we each carry a load
of which we cannot speak.

Here we commit our dead
to the unyielding land
where broken windmills creak
and stricken ganders cry.

Father, the dog, and I
are learning how to die
with our feet stuck in the muck
and our eyes trained on the sky.

Continued in ... The Nature Pages

Hunter's Log

by Timothy Murphy

The Dakota Institute, 2011.

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Review: Specialty Cut Flowers

At a time when farmers struggle to make a profit from crops of corn and potatoes and soybeans it rankles the mind to learn of folks who buy spotted knapweed and Johnson grass as ornamentals, and of gatherers and growers who make money off such weeds. The fresh and dried cut flower business is blossoming in American but its not coming up roses.

Florists whose cut flower arrangements were predominantly roses, carnations or mums a dozen years ago are now experimenting with and creating a steady market for asters and bellflowers, coneflowers and dogwoods, lobelias and statice. Even stem cuttings of ornamental onions, sage and thistles are growing with value.

Specialty Cut Flowers

The Production of Annuals, Perennials, Bulbs, and Woody Plants for Fresh and Dried Cut Flowers 

by Allan M. Armitage and Judy M. Laushman 

Timber Press, 2003

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