Gardening / Food Archives

Garden Allies

the Insects Birds and Other Animals That Keep Your Garden Beautiful and Thriving

by Frédérique Lavoipierre

This book is about the wildlife we should welcome into the yard and garden, what they do that is beneficial, and how to attract them. It tells about soil microorganisms, earthworms, beetles, wasps, moths, various types of flies, true bugs, ants, lacewings, spiders centipedes, and lots lots more. Also some brief sections on bats, birds, amphibians and reptiles. It was all very brief. There were a ton of different creatures mentioned in the book, but I know it barely touched on what’s really out there. And just when I felt like it was starting to get into interesting details about any one species’ life cycle, feeding methods, etc- it would promptly move on. So even though I had difficulty staying focused on this book as a whole and often returned to my easier reading, I also felt a bit disappointed in it. Or at least, I wanted to go read more on all the individual topcis, like a whole book just about the ants, for example.

A lot of the advice for all the beneficials is much the same: provide habitat, leave some leaf litter, don’t use poisons. Hesitate and learn more before you reactively kill something. Let the natural predators show up to be your control. Although for slugs and snails (most which are not native I learned), he had no compunctions about offering deadly methods to reduce their numbers.

Some things I did learn: stink bugs do have a predator- the feather-legged (tachnid) fly. Adults wasps feed on nectar. The fairy-fly wasp mymarid chalcid is smaller than a pinhead. Early flowering perennial grasses are good to support beetles and others. Yet some things baffled me a bit. I’d always read that eucalyptus (not native here) is anathema to wildlife, that no birds will use it. But he talks about red-tailed hawks nesting in one. And says that because beetles consume seed, they can be considered predators because they’re preventing something living from continuing to be alive and grow. What? Nobody calls a plant-consuming animal a predator- is that because herbivores usually eat part of the plant, and the rest continues to grow? but if they eat a seed, the total life is done. Well, I’m confused.

Borrowed from the public library.

Rating: 3/5

320 pages, 2021

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Current Reads, Gardening / Food

The Last Garden

by Liza Ketchum

A nice, quiet, reflective little book. I thought momentarily from the title that the focus would be the garden the author planted in what she felt were her final years- but really, it glances back to many different gardens she had throughout her life. From ones she barely participated in as a child, to those of family members and neighbors she visited, but mostly the gardens she planted and tended in various homes she lived in through her adult years. Each chapter has a loose focus on a certain plant or flower, telling what it meant to her, what family member or friend it reminds her of, how cuttings or shoots of it were handed down through the family or among gardening friends. I expected to glean little bits of gardening advice and lore, but what more I picked up on was the closeness of family among many moves and restarts, new beginnings all over again. The comfort that came in growing things from the soil, that familiar work with hands in the dirt. Simply joys in seeing birds and butterflies visit her plants, reassurance in knowing she’d done some good to support the natural world, when all else around might seem to be falling apart with misuse, pollution and global warming. I felt a bit distracted throughout, not always following closely who the various people she spoke of were, and missing more depth and detail about the actual gardens (I could well have read this book were it twice as long)- but for what it was, very nice. The finely drawn, black-and-white illustrations by Bobbi Angell are lovely.

I received my copy from LibraryThing Early Reviewers program, in exchange for an honest review.

Rating: 3/5

179 pages, 2020

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Bios / Memoirs, Current Reads, Gardening / Food

The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns

by Margaret Dilloway

A book that was easy to read in my currently foggy state of mind: simple in style, a bit dry in fact. Straightforward enough plot. About a woman teacher who has a lifelong struggle with kidney disease. She has dialysis every other night to keep her alive, while waiting for a kidney transplant. Meantime determined to hold down her job teaching high school science, and spend as much time as she can with her real passion: growing and breeding roses. Her dream is to create the next new rose that will get her into the commercial side of things. I found this both an interesting and dull read. I liked, of course, all the parts about rose cultivation, which I’m sure is even more painstaking and detail-oriented than the novel lets on. I found it hard to connect to the characters, to read between the lines and understand reactions the main character’s acquaintances and students had to her- she was often puzzled by things, and so was I. Most times I feel like I can figure out what the character isn’t seeing, but in this case I usually didn’t. It did fit with her character, to have the writing so dry and understated, but it sure made it hard to feel engaged as a reader.

Then there’s the huge twist thrown in (quite early on) when her teenage niece comes to stay- basically dumped on her doorstop by an estranged sister who has, according to snippets and hints about the past, always been irresponsible and in trouble. Even as an adult. So most of the story is about our Gal (her nickname) trying to create the perfect rose, attending rose shows, interacting with her friend and co-workers, feeling perhaps attracted to a new male teacher at the school (but unwilling to admit it) and attempting to parent a teen who won’t let her guard down. Plus all the trials of her health issues. Which kind of hit home for me, because one of my own children was born with reflux, had infections with high fevers as a toddler, eventually outgrew the problem but left with scars on the kidneys. All through reading this book I kept thinking: it could have been far worse. This could have been what my child went through, too. I would have liked the gardening aspects more, but there wasn’t enough of it, and the interpersonal relationships more, but they didn’t seem to have quite enough depth or insight. I think it was mostly the writing style just was not my type.

Of course, this all could be due to my unclear thinking, and not fair to the book at all. I will probably re-evaluate later on. There were some odd incongruencies, though- like one mention in the middle of the book, that Gal was color-blind. Never another word about that, and plenty of words about her admiring the colors of the roses! Also, I swear two or three characters in this novel have green eyes. It’s an uncommon eye color so that made me laugh the second time, and scratch my head the third.

Novel’s writing style reminded me of The Winter Garden.

Note: this was quickly written, due to screens making me feel ill at the moment. I’ll return later and edit for clarity, add missing details, and re-write if it’s particularly bad. I reserve the right to re-write. Here to remember and not forget, on to the next book getting me through the dullness of recovery.

Later: Nothing rewritten, but do read some of the other reviews I linked to. Apparently I’m the only person who didn’t really care for this book. It must just be me!

Rating: 2/5

397 pages, 2012

More opinions:
Stuff As Dreams Are Made On
BookNAround
Write Meg
The Good the Bad and the Unread

Tags: 2/5- Just Okay, Current Reads, Gardening / Food, General Fiction

Food Over Medicine

the Conversation That Could Save Your Life

by Pamela A. Popper and Glen Merzer

Yeah, I don’t know about this book. Kind of like the other one I pulled at random off a shelf browsing in the library, I thought it would be in general about healthy eating, but it seems to go to extremes. It is obvious not too far in that this book is written by two staunch vegans. They not only eschew eating any animal products, but no oils or nuts either. It’s promoting a strict no-dairy, no meat, very low-fat plant-only diet. And it goes on and on about how this will make your body so healthy you never get or miraculously recover from, a wide variety of diseases. One of the authors stated she hadn’t see a doctor in seventeen years. They are very negative about the medical establishment. Saying that tests for almost everything from mammograms to bone density scans are more harmful or useless than good. Saying that doctors don’t know anything about nutrition. Sharing a lot of sounds-to-good-to-be-true anecdotal stories about people with serious conditions who got better after going on this diet. Weird thing is that this book is one long transcribed conversation between the two authors. Personally I found that very easy to read, but it didn’t give enough detail or context with most things to satisfy me that I was reading facts. Funny thing is that when I was browsing before starting the book, the one page I flipped it open to at random, they were talking about people who have to avoid gluten. But that’s the only part of the book that talks about that at all. There’s some recipes. I copied a few down, just to try. Nothing wrong with adding more dishes featuring vegetables into my repertoire. I might come back and comment on here after I’ve attempted them.

Part of the book that was really off-putting were two final chapters, one all about how food industries are corrupt and FDA advice is bad and pharmecutical companies are bad, etc. Another that gets into politics. The authors just kind of lost me on all those points.

Borrowed from the public library.

Rating: 2/5

240 pages, 2013

Tags: 2/5- Just Okay, Current Reads, Gardening / Food, Medical/Health

Celiac Disease

a Guide to Living with Gluten Intolerance

by Sylvia Llewelyn Bower

This book was written by a nurse who has celiac disease. It has two co-authors who wrote some of the chapters: Mary Kay Sharrett, a dietician who ran a support group for celiac patients at a children’s hospital, and Steve Plogsted who is a pharmacist specializing in helping patients avoid gluten in medications. Like other books I’ve read about celiac disease and/or gluten intolerance, this starts out by defining the condition, describing how a diagnosis is obtained, and outlining how to successfully live gluten-free. How to change your eating habits, read labels more carefully, source gluten-free foods, maintain a gluten-free kitchen (whether living solo or sharing space with others), deal with eating out and social events, how to help your children stick to a gluten-free diet if needed, and so on.

A lot of this is familiar information to me by now. Things that were new to me: the entire chapter on a skin affliction linked to celiac disease, dermatitis herpetiformis. The explanation of why gluten intolerant people often also have lactose intolerance (me included). Ideas on what to consume after an accidental exposure, to help your body recover faster. New recipes are always appreciated, I will be copying some of these down and trying them out! Some of the tips on keeping kitchen areas free of contamination were helpful to me (though I’m not going to stick a huge sign over my dedicated cutting board, I think that would be too much for my family). I also appreciated that this book discussed the presence of gluten in medications (though it sounds like the risk level is very minimal), and dealt extensively with the emotional upheaval of dealing with celiac disease. Both from having an undiagnosed malady for most of your life (and maybe the discouragement of everyone around you thinking you’re a hypochondriac), and then the shock of a diagnosis, how overwhelming it feels to need to change everything, how isolating and frustrating to have to avoid something so ubiquitous- the social aspects. There are a lot of personal stories in this book- from children, teens and adults. From people who knew they were celiac from a young age, to those who found out after decades of struggle with their health. I appreciated those stories. Some of them I really could relate to, others described an experience very different from my own- whether in the symptoms experienced or the interactions with people around them- but all of them I learned something from.

Borrowed from the public library.

Rating: 3/5

216 pages, 2014

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Current Reads, Gardening / Food, Medical/Health

The Dirt Cure

Growing Healthy Kids with Food Straight from the Soil

by Maya Shetreat-Klein

It took me much longer than normal to get through this book, because I kept getting overwhelmed by all the information, and tired of the alarmist attitude, so I’d shut it off and come back to the next day. Or the day after that. Funny, the subtitle has changed with a reprint- other covers I see online say Healthy Food, Healthy Gut, Happy Child. I thought it was going to be mostly about gardening, or sourcing organic food. There is some of that, but mostly it came across to me as a huge long list of things to avoid. Pesticides, GMOs, additives, airborne toxins, plastics, pasteurized milk, non-organic produce, processed anything and so on. It also feels repetitive, for all the length it should have gone into far more detail on certain things. For example, she talks about how wheat is not the same as it used to be, with no mention of how the protein structure has changed through genetic breeding, just how roundup is in the soil and pesticides on the plants. (I don’t think that’s what gluten-intolerant people are reacting to?) I felt like a lot of stuff was just mentioned and then skipped right over, leaving the reader with questions.

She makes it sound like you should only eat things you grew with your own two hands, drink milk straight from the cow, and have eggs from your own backyard-ranging chickens. But obviously most people can’t. What about the rest of us. I have a garden and I don’t even grow half of the fresh food we eat, not even in the middle of the harvest season. I have no way to keep chickens, meat rabbits, goats or a cow. For a while my husband and I bought our meat from a local farm that did its own butchering- it was an hour’s drive away and closed when the pandemic started. We haven’t been able to go back since.

The book feels entirely written from the standpoint of being a parent and helping your child have better overall health. At the end there’s chapters about encouraging your kids to try new foods when you switch to healthier options, how important togetherness at the dinner table is, and how to get kids involved in choosing healthy food and preparing it. Personally I could relate to that, though most of the ideas were not new to me: getting outside is good for you, exposure to some dirt is beneficial, buy the freshest produce possible, etc. On the other hand, quite a few of the food items the author praised for health benefits were new to me. Never heard of salmon candy before!

But the main issue I have with this book is the things I find alarming, or outright disagree with. The book says more than once, that childhood exposure to diseases like mumps and measles helps train your immune system so it doesn’t overreact to other things later on. Also makes vague negative remarks about vaccines, which made me uncomfortable (I strongly feel that children should be vaccinated). While I agree that drinking certain teas can boost your immune system and walking through the woods lift your mood, I am personally skeptical about the benefits of burning sage in your house or “earthing” (also called “grounding”) which just means coming into physical contact with the ground- because apparently your body can absorb electrical charges from the Earth. Really? Never heard of this before. I’m open to learning new things, but a bit too much about this book struck me as a being out there. Plus the author seems to think that autism, attention deficit disorders and other neurological issues can be remedied by changing diet alone. Another concept I’m skeptical about.

I find it really hard to think critically about this book, because I shouldn’t judge it on the fact that I disagree with the author on some points. And I’m so overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of things it tells me are bad (bottled water, sunscreen, vaccines, cereal bars, tuna fish etc etc) I can’t objectively view the way it’s written at all. Except to note: a lot of alarmist tone, and not much solid information that makes me feel sure I’m reading real facts.

Borrowed from the public library, as an audiobook. Read aloud by Marguerite Gavin, 11.5 hours

Rating: 3/5

384 pages, 2016

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Current Reads, Gardening / Food, Medical/Health

What to Eat When

by Michael Crupain, Michael Roizen and Ted Spiker

I picked up this book off a shelf out of pure curiosity. Thinking how I habitually eat oranges for vitamin C when facing a headcold, or have chicken soup when recovering from the flu or even just the daily cup of tea in the morning (coffee for my husband)- this book purports that when you eat certain foods is just as important for your body’s health and optimal function as what exactly you’re eating. The main takeaways I got from the little I listened to (DNF), was: front-load your daily calories ie eat a big breakfast, a lighter lunch and a small supper. Don’t indulge in late-night snacking. And the usual no-brainer: eat less processed stuff, more whole foods, more vegetables, etc. There’s a lot more info but I kept tuning out because it went on and on about things I purposefully avoid, so I had trouble listening to more. Frequently says how great walnuts are- well, I have an alarming reaction to walnuts. He purports how good oatmeal is for dinner (and cold to boot) but oatmeal gives me stomachaches. (Also kept saying you should eat potatoes cold, I’m not sure I understand why). And of course there’s constant touting of the benefits of whole grain bread- but I’m still adamantly gluten-free. It’s not too hard to mentally stick amaranth cereal or sorghum in my head every time he said whole grains but that alongside the frequent references to excellent walnuts just made me feel tired. So I quit listening to this one for personal reasons, not because I think it’s full of poor or unsound advice. (Although this is the first time I’ve heard that egg yolks are bad for you- really?) I didn’t get far enough to assess it that way.

Borrowed from the public library in audiobook format, 7 hours narrated by Lloyd James. I made it through 3 discs of 8 or 10 (don’t have it in front of me now and can’t recall exactly how many were in the case).

Rating: Abandoned

352 pages, 2018

Tags: 0/5- Abandoned, Gardening / Food, Medical/Health

This is Your Mind on Plants

by Michael Pollan

This book- wasn’t quite what I expected. It’s about three different plants that can alter our state of consciousness- namely poppies (a downer), caffeine (a stimulant) and mescaline (a hallucinogenic). I thought I was going to read a lot of facts surrounding these plants, their chemicals, and how they have affected mankind. I did get some of that, and what there was, pretty interesting. Though the history kind of felt like it dragged on and on (the rise of opium addiction- in the 1800’s it was despised “opium dens” and now opioids in painkillers, how coffee affected work production in industrial-revolution-era Europe, the culture of tea-drinking in Asia, and how use of peyote is intertwined with the Native American Church – only just over a hundred years old). But what I mostly got was detailed accounts of the author’s personal experiences with these substances. In the first case, it was a bit about gardening, and a lot more about his paranoia on being found out- it’s okay to grow poppies in your yard, it’s not okay to extract the opium from them. A lot about involvement with lawyers, fear of legal action, and finally he went ahead and made a tea, then described what it felt like, promptly went out afterwards and destroyed his plants. Second part, more of us can relate to I’m sure- all about the effects of coffee and to a lesser extent, tea. Author had drunk coffee habitually for so long, that he went off it for three months (very abruptly, too) so he could experience the withdrawl, how his mind might function differently without it, and the jolt of resuming its use. His main observation? after getting it out of his system, he functioned fine (and slept a lot better) but mostly missed the rituals and habits surrounding coffee drinking. The very day he resumed, drinking one espresso created an instant urge to have another, and he realized just how addictive it really is. Last part is about peyote, but out of respect for the Native American religion, he refrained from trying that and instead got himself invited to a ceremony that used another species of cactus which also produces mescaline. This section of the book was- a bit unsettling. While it was interesting to hear about what the effects felt like for him, and the ceremony surrounding it, the whole thing felt very heavily on the side of cultural appropriation and it made me uncomfortable.

So: a lot more personal details than I really was interested in. Oddly, much of it sounded familiar to me, though I’m sure I haven’t read this book before. Maybe I browsed it once and decided to read it later? or perhaps details from someone else’s review stuck in my head (but I couldn’t find one). I thought perhaps some bits from this book were present in a previous book of his, but looking back at the ones noted in my blog, I don’t think so. Maybe I heard it on an NPR spot, hm.

Borrowed from the public library. Audiobook, author’s voice, 7.5 hours listening time.

Rating: 3/5

288 pages, 2021

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Current Reads, Gardening / Food

Greenhorns

50 Dispatches from the New Farmer's Movement

by Zoë Ida Bradbury, Severine von Tscharner Fleming and Paula Manalo (editors)

Just the kind of book to get me hopeful and interested in gardening again, after a difficult summer. (I’m mostly ripping out diseased and bug-ridden plants now, hoping for better next spring). This book is a collection of thoughtful essays – just a few pages each- by small farmers new to the endeavor. From young couples to those starting out in their forties and fifties. People who inherited a small family farm or scraped together whatever they had to buy a piece of land or worked on leased soil not their own. Every kind of organization from tight-knit groups of volunteers and employees, to cooperative community workings, to a partnership that refuses to do anything requiring them to go beyond the power of their two pairs of hands. What they have in common is the effort put into growing good food. And what an effort it is. Economics, capricious weather, equipment troubles, financing woes, you name it. Then there’s the backbreaking work itself. The aggravating realities that most small farmers face, needing an off-the-farm job to make things work. The ideals they hold, the reasons they’re committed to keeping their operations small, to growing organic, to selling local. Mishaps, neighbor troubles, pest issues, struggles to deal with livestock as a first-timer- it’s all in here. Such a myriad of voices, but all on a subject I’ve been deeply interested in for a long time. The more I read about it the more I doubt I’d make it as an actual farmer, even though I love putting my hands in the soil and doing the hard work- so much of it is a balance of running a business and staying ahead of trends, there’s skills way beyond me and it’s all I can do to find time and solve the problems my little garden has! But I’m full of admiration for what these people have picked up, in the hardest time ever it seems. I’m inspired now to go to my local farmer’s market again – haven’t been there in a long time.

Borrowed from the public library.

Rating: 4/5

256 pages, 2012

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Current Reads, Gardening / Food, Nonfiction (general), Short Stories

Accidental Health

A Memoir of a Unique Journey to True Health

by Dee McGuire

I found this book browsing. I picked it up out of curiosity- how could health be accidental? The blurb on the back gave me no indication of what health issues the author struggled with, or how she overcame them- it sounded inspiring, but vague. Oddly none of the reviews online mention the conditions that were debilitating the author’s life, so I will tell although with a note of spoilers if you want to be surprised. Because I didn’t see where this story was going, and then it sure made me sit up and take notice. (And this post gets a bit personal because of how I related to it).

She suffered acute back pain, for many many years. It became more severe with pain in other joints, skin problems, difficulty concentrating and lots of other symptoms that just seemed to pile up. Visits to doctors and specialists, multiple surgeries on her back, neck and knees, pain medications and physical therapy- none of it really did any good. In the middle of all this was a frightening time, suddenly learning she had breast cancer, getting surgery, and just as suddenly told it was completely resolved. Really I was appalled to read how callously and brusquely the doctors treated her, with her concerns about conditions that were undermining her whole life they seemed to think unimportant. Unless she was leaving something out, I can’t imagine meeting doctors who give you so little actual consideration.

I started to suspect one of the major answers she found to her health issues, when I read that after a certain proecdure, she was unable to eat for a number of days, and her body aches and some other complaints instantly disappeared. Only to return later. I skipped ahead to see if gluten was mentioned in future pages and stared at a sentence in the beginning of chapter thirteen: My goal was to avoid wheat, rye and barley, the grains containing gluten. It was celiac disease (or a gluten intolerance?) Discovered when she noticed a friend at work avoiding certain foods, and asked about her diet- the friend was gluten-free which sparked McGuire’s interest. She decided to just try eating differently for a few days, and was amazed at the difference in how she felt. Her pain was gone.

I know exactly this feeling. I’ve been there: so delighted in the flexibility and ease to move my body that I laugh out loud to my family: “look, I can touch my toes! I can walk barefoot and my feet don’t hurt!” It’s just so shockingly wonderful to have that chronic pain gone that you’re stunned at how good you feel- it’s like a miracle, and yet that’s how you ought to feel every day, ha. So I could relate well to this part of her story. Her frustration in trying to make new food selections in the grocery store (yeah gluten-free on the label doesn’t always mean what you hope it does). Her quest to figure out what other foods bothered her digestive system and caused flareups. She moved on to visit a fuctional medicine doctor. (I had to look that up- seems to be another kind of alternative medicine) and then did a detox. To be honest, I’m skeptical about detox, and some of the other measures the functional doctor recommended (not to mention the staggering expense, and all those tests!)

But this story resonated with me because I could relate to all the stuff about how gluten had affected her autoimmune system and caused her joint pain. I’ve had those moments, when suddenly my wrist hurt so acutely I’d drop something, or my knee so I’d have to stop walking and hold onto something, or my lower back so I’d need a cushion or heat pad behind it to drive. I’d wake up in the morning with my body hurting and have to roll out of bed and lever myself up from the floor, because I couldn’t just sit up in bed. At one point I could barely bend to tie my shoes. I was on the verge of going to the doctor to find out if I had arthritis or some joint issue when I stumbled on the idea that gluten could be causing another chronic issue I had (insomnia) so I tried going gluten-free for a few days. Just to see. It was a shock and delight, to find that my insomnia, joint pain and many other symptoms disappeared. Most have never come back, except for the few times I accidentally have gluten exposure again.

So I’m there with the author on all this. The need to clean out your kitchen, to be super careful in restaurants, to ask people about ingredients if they make you food, to read labels on food packages more discerningly. I’ve found cross-contamination and trace amounts really do affect me. I appreciated reading the particulars on how her family found ways to eat healthier and avoid the foods that gave them problems (her kids had minor issues that were resolved when they avoided gluten too).

The whole book is kind of a wake-up call, that the things you put in your body really do matter. That having good health could be as simple as giving your body the wholesome foods it needs to maintain itself properly. Not all the author’s health issues were resolved when she went gluten-free, cut individually problematic foods and did her detox. But the worst ones dissipated and she felt increasingly better as time went on. I’m glad she was determined to keep seeking for answers, and that she shared her story.

Borrowed from the public library.

Rating: 3/5

201 pages, 2021

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Bios / Memoirs, Gardening / Food, Medical/Health

Tag: Gardening / Food

the Insects Birds and Other Animals That Keep Your Garden Beautiful and Thriving

the Conversation That Could Save Your Life

a Guide to Living with Gluten Intolerance

Growing Healthy Kids with Food Straight from the Soil

50 Dispatches from the New Farmer's Movement

A Memoir of a Unique Journey to True Health

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