I did my small part to aid the consumer-driven economic recovery with a recent trip to Half-Price Books. The store on this side of town always has a terrific selection of gardening books, and I walked out with the following armload:
Armitage's Garden Perennials: A Color Encyclopedia. Allan M. Armitage. (Timber Press, 2000. ISBN 0-88192-435-0.) I've always wanted this well-known essential reference, which is going to make a handsome (albeit well-thumbed) bookend paired with "the Dirr" (Jamaica Kincaid's term). Brand-new, half-price, for this baby. But there was more...
Midwest Gardens. Pamela Wolfe (photographs by Gary Irving). (Chicago Review Press, 1991. ISBN 1-55652-138-3). I borrowed this book from the public library last year and, with successive renewals to the max, kept it around for 4 months of reading and re-reading. Mint condition, quarter-price...snapped it up. And moved on to...
The Flamboyant Garden. Elisabeth Sheldon (photographs by Dency Kane). (Henry Holt and Company, 1997. ISBN ISBN 0-8050-3798-5.) What a thrill to come across another work by Elisabeth Sheldon so soon after enjoying her Time and the Gardener. In this book, she describes her creation of a "hot-color" garden...right up this color-craver's alley. And then there was...
Redoute's Roses. Pierre-Joseph Redoute. (Taschen, 2001. ISBN 3-8228-1356-7.) Beautiful illustrations of old garden roses (including Rosa x Harisonii, the "Yellow Rose of Texas"), so entrancing that I may even be lured into trying to grow some. Then, finally...
Gardener's Delight. John Seymour (illustrations by Peter Morter). (Harmony Books, 1979. ISBN 0-517-53805-9.) A charming (not to mention "delight"ful) collection of garden lore (shall we call them "rural legends"?) on more than a dozen vegetables, fruits and herbs. The cover provides the best description of its contents, once you adjust to the old-style font (for a split second, it appears to read: "Containing the Defcription, Place, Time, Names, Nature, Hiftorie & Vertues of all manner of Fruits of the Earth for the growing & confuming thereof")...have no fear; the text within the book itself is conventionally printed.
Must...go...back for more...very, very soon.