Destination: Books

Bee Ready

I've been getting ready for The Great Georgia Pollinator Census on August 19-20, 2022 for over a year now.  The University of Georgia extension service created the census to promote pollinator conservation.  Last year I recorded the numbers and types of bees, wasps and butterflies that were visiting some of the flowers in my local community garden and filed it with the Census website. 

This year I have been able to expand my range of recordkeeping choices. Beginning in the Spring of 2021, I started trying to regenerate an eroded scrub area that was a neglected part of my development. Books like Farming While Black, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conversation That Starts in Yard, and The Living Soil Handbook, have provided some of the inspiration and instruction.  I've added some better soil with some compost, terraced it and planted some lavender, black-eyed Susans, and marigolds—the latter two I started from seed after taking an online Wylde Center gardening class last winter. A few of my neighbors have donated some other plants as well as their time watering and trying to control the weeds. What used to be just some scrub vegetation, badly eroded soil (mainly clay really) has now become the beginnings of a garden that attracts bees (not butterflies yet). 

Adding to the community vibe a regular customer came by our Destination: Books booth at the Freedom Farmer's Market at the Carter Center last month gave me some native milkweed plants to attract monarchs, which I have added to my meadow mix. 

Our next popup at the Freedom Farmer's Market is Saturday, September 10th, but in the meantime, you can sharpen your pencils and print out a scorecard to participate in the upcoming pollinator census.  

Thinking Outside Our Skulls

There are two books that have been at the forefront of my thoughts lately. One is Ministry for The Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, and the other is Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Futures by Merlin Sheldrake.

Ministry for the Future

The recent high temperatures in the U.S. and Western Europe remind me of the opening chapters of Ministry for The Future, Robinsons speculative novel about the not-to-distant future of a planet coming to grips with global catastrophe. Robinson’s book begins with a cataclysmic heat event in India killing millions of people.

Depressing reading? Yes sorta, but as you read on, the Robinson book shows that the future doesn’t have to be so bleak if we combine technology and a willingness to make political change--even if it takes some real arm twisting.  The book shows us a way out and that is a cause for optimism.  For more about the book, visit a posting "Speculating on the Future" on my companion blog. There you will find more about the book and links to Ezra Klein's recent interview with Robinson.

In the interview Robinson remains guardedly optimistic. He thinks the planet has reached a sweet spot that climate change definitely has our attention (no small task) and it’s not too late to do something about it.  This makes sense. If things are too catastrophic then we are too overwhelmed to do anything, but if the negative impact is too mild then it is too easy to ignore. 

Alas, we have reached the sweet spot of misery.

Entangled Life

Like Ministry this book is supposed to change your life, which is always makes me skeptical, but you cannot read it and not be amazed about all the possibilities.  What I appreciated about Sheldrake’s short book is that he provides a readable overview of how fungi have played an unheralded pivotal role in the planet’s ecosystem.

He includes chapters on defining the fungi (e.g., truffles) and how they operate in labyrinths underneath our feet. There is a chapter on lichen (which are well suited for space travel BTW), the long history of hallucinogenic mushrooms, and the possibilities of mushrooms being used to combat pollution and soil contamination.  There are some color photographs to illustrate Sheldrake’s book including this oyster mushroom growing out of jar of old cigarette butts. *

Both Ministry and Entangled books address these topics individually, but what contributes to their popularity is that they provide a vision of the possibilities if we just “think outside our skulls," as Sheldrake writes.

You can browse through both books at our next pop-up at the Freedom Farmers Market at the Carter Center in Atlanta on Saturday morning, July 30th.

*This photo of the Sheldrake book comes from Rob McCoy who has written a mushroom classic entitled Radical Mycology, where he has used a white rot fungus, the Pleurotus mycelium to grow oyster mushrooms from used cigarette butts.

In Praise of Gardening Books

I have to say this year's garden bounty has been the best ever (but historically I have had a low bar). As always some of the success has been due to luck, but not entirely, because at Destination: Books not only do we sell gardening books, but we follow the written word.  

It begins with soil and all the veggie gardening books that we sell emphasize the need to amend your soil ahead of Spring planting.  This year I have amended it with compost from the local Food Alliance and then added some Alpaca manure from my daughter's private herd. I also spaced my tomato plants better allowing for improved air flow and avoided getting the leaves wet while watering in order to reduce the chance for the cursed Blossom End Rot (known as BER)  or damage from various fungi. Throughout the growing season, I kept consulting Craig LeHoullier's Epic Tomatoes.

I tried growing Cherokee Purple heirloom, but it died from tomato wilt, which LeHoullier reassures me that "as a rule tomato diseases are stubborn and often fatal and attempts at treatments for the vast majority have been met with little or no success." See it's not my fault. Fortunately, my Better Boy tomatoes (a hybrid) were more resilient.

Oriental eggplants are more tender and tastier and do not require the soaking to remove the bitterness that is common with large eggplants. I followed some of the premises set down by Jessica Walliser in her book Plant Partners: Science-Based Companion Planting Strategies for the Vegetable Garden where I planted radishes as a "sacrificial plants" to attract flea beetles away from the young eggplants. I did something similar by planting marigolds next to the tomato plants. I was also cognizant of keeping my eggplants and tomatoes separated because these members of the nightshade family are not compatible.

The best part of my good fortune was that my partner Denise found a great recipe for eggplant and tomato casserole. She is great cook and cookbook connoisseur. I am only the sous chef and dish washer, but I can attest that the fresh taste of that casserole was something you'd expect at a good Italian restaurant. 

These books and more will be available at our next popup bookstall at the Freedom Farmer's Market at the Carter Center scheduled for Saturday morning, July 30th or they are currenty available at our Gardening How-To online store. 

 

A Variety of Bee Books

There is almost as many different types of bee books as there are bees. There are books like The Bees in Your Backyard an encyclopedia that can help you identify bees—like the one that stung me when I was working in my garden the other day.  (But it was probably a wasp defending its tennis ball home.) 

There are bee narratives, such as Bee People and the Bugs They Love a confessional about the secret world of beekeeping or Dancing with Bees: A Journey into Nature, the story of a woman who reconnected with the natural world via her interest in bees.

And there are books like Plant Partners: Science-based Companion Planting Strategies for the Vegetable Garden. This book dedicates an entire chapter explaining the importance of native bees and how to attract these pollinators to your garden. (The first thing they teach you in every bee book is that the well-known honeybee is not native to North America.)

We will have all these books at our next popup book stall on Saturday morning, June 25th at the Carter Center Freedom Farmer’s Market in Atlanta.  If you cannot make it, we do sell them online here, but its better when you can check them out firsthand to select the one that works best for you.

Georgia Pollinator Census

The Georgia Pollinator Census is scheduled for August 19th and 20th.  For more information on how you can participate in this statewide effort visit here. 

Soil Improvement

Last summer, inspired by Amy Stewart’s book The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms (a Destination: Books bestseller reviewed here on my companion blog), I replaced my old worm tub with a four-story worm tower, a Father’s Day gift from my daughter Bonnie. The tower provides a steady supply of worm castings for my patio planter boxes and a generous scoop or two when I plant any veggies or herbs.

This was only the beginning. Earlier this year I participated in the Scott Community Garden's project that replaced our crumbling worm bins with some vermin proof, industrial-sized bins. Fortunately, one of the gardeners at Scott was an expert woodworker and along with a few strong backs we put something together over a period of a few months. There was even a little ceremony in Decatur with a photo opportunity to celebrate.

My garden is looking very good so far this year. Not only did I use my castings, and some composted soil from the Food Well Alliance (they provided the bin grant too) but even mixed some alpaca manure into my soil before planting. Daughter Bonnie who raises alpacas in rural Alabama “donated” a fresh, 5-gallon bucketful of alpaca bounty for my garden. 

Most of our basic how-to gardening books provide simple guidance on how to get started improving your soil.  We even have a few books like The Living Soil Handbook for those who want to take it to the next level. I usually don’t display books like this during our popup (our next one is at the Freedom Farmer’s Market at the Carter Center on Saturday morning June 25th,) but if you get me talking about soil, I will pull them out.

And if there is any doubt about the importance of healthy soil, check out Trevor Noah's short interview with Sadhguru on The Daily Show.

 

Fresh Offerings

Here are some of the fresh new titles Destination: Books will be bringing to the Freedom Farmer's Market at the Carter Center on Saturday morning, May 28th. 

You can appreciate how exotic fungi can be by thumbing through the 40 color illustrations in the book Fungi from the Royal Botanical Garden’s Fungarium. Fungi features the work of Elsie Wakefield (1886 -1972), a pioneer female scientist and artist who was the President of the British Mycological Society. (Did you know that children’s author Beatrix Potter was also a mycologist?)

You don’t know beans until you’ve read Susan Young’s Growing Beans: A Diet for Healthy People and Planet a slim reference book that covers the basics: bean types, growing beans, soil preparation, cooking tips, proper seed storage and a guide to beans around the globe with lots of color photographs. (I was so inspired I ran out and planted half a dozen Carson Bush Beans.)

Consider the shrub when planning a more environmentally friendly garden. Martin Crawford’s Shrubs for Gardens, Agroforestry and Permaculture is a complete reference book to identifying the qualities of useful shrubs ranging from common fruit bushes to those that have medicinal parts. According to Crawford, you cannot underestimate the ability of shrubs to fight climate change. The book covers over 60 varieties of shrubs and it identifies which plants grow well in the Southeastern parts of North America. (I am thinking blueberries bushes.)

For a more complete list of Destination: Books's pop-up inventory, visit here. 

 

Electrify

Electrify: An Optimists Playbook for a Clean Energy Future (MIT Press, 2021) by Saul Griffith is a briskly paced book advocating that the best way to slow climate change is to shift the electric grid away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. Included in this strategy is connecting our day-to-day necessities (especially electric cars) into that grid. 

Griffith writes that the transmission lines that move the electricity generated by wind and solar energy to the population centers needs to be upgraded.  What makes Griffith's argument compelling is how he uses data to solidify the points he is trying to make. In the appendix, he provides succinct answers to address the main concerns that people will have.

Coincidently, there is one question about utilities that caught my attention:

Appendix A, page 198

Georgians for Renewable Energy

Griffith's sentence "If you really want to make a difference, get yourself elected to the board of your state's utility commission and steer it in the right direction"  really resonates because Georgians now have an opportunity to do something meaningful.

The Georgia Public Service Commissioners (PSC) is a committee of five members that make recommendations on Georgia Energy Policy. On May 25, 2022, the PSC is holding hearings on the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) which is mapping out Georgia's energy future. 

One important way you advocate for clean energy renewables is to comment on the PSC public comments page, but the form has to be filled out properly. Fortunately, a group Decatur Cares About Climate has made that easier by providing step by step instructions HERE. 

If enough people comment,  these commissioners will take notice because they are probably not used to being flooded by citizens input.

 

Additional References

A lengthy radio interview with Saul Griffith from October 29, 2021 on the NPR show Climate One.

The NPR show 1A aired a show on the topic, "Our Climate Is Heating Up and We Know How to Stop It, But Will We?." Members of the panel reinforce Griffith's arguments that the technology is now available for significantly cleaner energy, but the two main obstacles are the transmission line issue and the political will to make it happen.

And finally, you should read Electrify. Order a copy here from Destination: Books. 

Gardening Respite

I am taking a brief respite from my own gardening toil-in-the-soil activities to set up the Destination: Books pop-up stall at the Freedom Farmers Market at the Carter Center on Saturday morning, April 30th.   

Gardening-wise, this is my fourth year "curating" a small 9' by 8' plot at the Scott Community Garden in downtown Decatur.  The status report so far:

-- The snow peas are looking good.

-- The carrots look good above ground, but below the surface they have the length and circumference of a toothpick.

-- The eggplants are in, and I have planted radishes alongside them to attract some of the same pests that chomp on eggplants. Fortunately, I have good luck in this space in the past growing the slender Oriental variety. If only I can keep them healthy enough to get some real foliage. 

My biggest concern is always tomatoes. You think it's just summer and they will grow automatically, but I find them a challenge with poor production or the appearance of the dreaded Blossom End Rot (BER). This spring I have been reading Epic Tomatoes: How to Select & Grow the Best Varieties of All Time by Craig LeHoullier. Not only does it include tips on controlling cutworms, proper staking, and a history/comparison of the many varieties, but there are many large, colorful pictures. I am thinking about cutting the pictures out and putting little signs near my Cherokee Purples and Big Boys to inspire them.

Here's a sampling of some of the books that you can expect to see at the next Freedom Farmers Market. And you have my word that none of the books will have the pages torn out.

 

 

Destination Books at Edgewood Garden Earth Day

The Destination: Books popup book stall will be at the Wylde Center's Edgewood Community Garden Earth Day Festival from 4 to 7 p.m. on Friday, April 22, 2022. We will be featuring books on gardening, sustainability and some children's books.

Destination Books at the Wylde Center -- Maybe

The Destination: Books' pop-up book stall with its books on gardening and sustainability is scheduled to be at the Wylde Center's Spring Plant Sale Festival at Oakhurst Garden on Saturday, April 16th from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The Wylde Center is located in the Oakhurst neighborhood of Decatur.

Of course, the weather forecast is iffy at the time of this posting, and one thing we've learned is that rain, wind and books don't mix, and we might have to take a rain check. But that shouldn't dampen the headliner—plenty of plants will be available.

Our Destination: Books online store will still be open where you can order many of our favorites for delivery through Bookshop.org, which supports independent booksellers like us.