Dusty, Dull Books on a Land Library Shelf

Why did this book become the Land Library’s page-by-page preoccupation over the past week? It’s title might seem a bit dull: Fodder and Pasture Plants, written by George H. Clark and M. Oscar Malte, and published in 1913 by the Department of Agriculture, Canada.

But here is where our reading experience changed. Our sense of touch was engaged first. The 100-year old cloth cover gave us a tactile pleasure that no modern dust jacket can provide. As we delved into the text, there was much to learn from Clarke and Malte’s complete botanical description of each plant, unexpectedly enlivened by occasional quotes from the likes of Xenophon, Pliny, Virgil, Chaucer, and Shakespeare!

Books are built of chapters and parts. Here’s the part we love best from our century-old copy of Fodder and Pasture Plants: more than 25 full-color plates, from the brush of Norman Criddle. Here’s just two of Criddle’s beautiful depictions:

“Brome grass is extensively grown in Hungary, where the climate is much like that of the Canadian West…“

“Red Top is indigenous to all European countries, Northern Africa, North and Central Asia, and North America.“

from the preface:

“It is, therefore, the purpose of this book to provide, in a form convenient for reference, fairly comprehensible information about those grasses, clovers, and other fodder and pasture plants that are generally to be of value in Canada.“

Yes — and maybe something more!

Our thanks goes to the folks at Small Farmer’s Journal. Their recent feature led us to the Land Library’s most recent acquisition — Clarke & Malte’s Fodder and Pasture Plants!

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The Black Arts Shouldn’t be So Much Fun

When we read Galway Kinnell’s poetry, we often come back to one of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ odd phrases: There lives the dearest freshness deep down things. Both poets live in a “world charged“, and both find great joy in the sensuous feel of words. Here’s Galway Kinnell at his most sensuous — and seemingly having enormous fun:

Blackberry Eating

I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,
the stalks very prickly, a penalty
they earn for knowing the black art
of blackberry making; and as I stand among them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
like strengths or squinched or broughamed,
many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
in the silent, startled, icy, black language
of blackberry eating in late September.

Galway Kinnell, from A New Selected Poems

For more on Galway Kinnell (& Gerard Manley Hopkins), here’s a few volumes from the Land Library’s poetry shelves!

A New Selected Poems by Galway Kinnell, Strong is Your Hold by Galway Kinnell, Mortal Beauty, God’s Grace: Major Poems and Spiritual Writings by Gerard Manley Hopkins, Selected Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins

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Age Old Alchemy

grafting: the practice of physically joining parts of two individual plants, as with stock and scion, so that they will form a union and grow together.

I was a youngster when I joined our next door neighbor as he grafted a new apple variety to one of his well-established trees. I was dumbfounded, and still am by this age-old horticultural practice. Grafting is usually done in the spring, just before growth gets underway.

An ambitious weekend project? But first check out the books above. R.J. Garner’s The Grafter’s Handbook has been a classic for many years, and has just been released in a revised 6th edition.

An easier beginning might be Larry Southwick’s Grafting Fruit Trees (also pictured above), part of Storey’s slim but useful Country Wisdom Bulletin series.

But don’t be put off by Garner’s textbook-like appearance:

The Grafter’s Handbook is a must-have on any fruit grower’s shelf! Meanwhile, take a look at this excellent, clear-headed approach to grafting:

The grafting of fruit trees is one of the oldest of recorded horticultural practices. The Romans developed and used several grafting techniques still in use today. Early texts, cautioned that the Japanese plum could be successfully grafted onto a peach, but not vice versa.

An age-old practice, ready for the next generation:

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City Wild, and a few of our favorite books!

“The citizen takes his city for granted far too often. He forgets to marvel.” — Carlos Fuentes

Good news! The Land Library continues to work toward opening a Urban Homestead Library in inner-city Denver, along with our second Kids and Educators Nature Library. We’ve been devoting more and more of our resources to find some of the best urban nature books available. These books are wonderful tools, and a powerful remedy for ever taking your home town for granted!

Books such as these, that help you learn about:

BIRDS, BEES…

AND TREES!

NEW NEIGHBORS…

FOOD…

and PLENTY OF FUN PLACES TO EXPLORE!

For the rest of this month, we’ll be featuring many more books on nature in the city — all leading up to the April 27th Colorado premiere of the award-winning film The Legend of Pale Male:

The Land Library is proud to be a co-sponsor of this benefit screening for The Bloomsbury Review, a national literary treasure that has been celebrating and promoting great writing since 1980. We’ll be celebrating two legends that night — The Bloomsbury Review, as it launches into its next chapter, and Pale Male, the famous red-tailed hawk of Central Park, now courting his eighth mate somewhere over midtown Manhattan!

WHEN & WHERE: Saturday, April 27th, 6:30pm at Denver’s Montview Presbyterian Church

For more information on the April 27th premiere, call 303-455-3123, or 800-783-3338, or visit The Bloomsbury Review website!

We hope you enjoy this inspiring film clip!

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Legends Live On

Save the Date! The Land Library is excited to be a co-sponsor of the Colorado premiere of the award-winning documentary, The Legend of Pale Male (Saturday, April 27th, 6:30pm, at Denver’s Montview Presbyterian Church). This will be a benefit screening for The Bloomsbury Review, a national literary treasure that has been celebrating and promoting great writing since 1980. We’ll be celebrating two legends that night — The Bloomsbury Review, as it launches into its next chapter, and Pale Male, the famous red-tailed hawk of Central Park, now courting his eighth mate somewhere over midtown Manhattan!

More details will follow, but for now enjoy this inspiring clip!

Over the next month, the Land Library will share more on April 27th’s premiere of The Legend on Pale Male. Along the way, we’ll feature many wonderful books that celebrate nature in the city. Here’s two volumes inspired by Pale Male himself:

A wonderful children’s picture book, Pale Male: Citizen Hawk of New York City by Janet Schulman, with illustrations by Meilo So, and Marie Winn’s classic Red-Tails in Love: A Wildlife Drama in Central Park.

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Parlez vous francais?

Well, if you don’t speak French, no worries — read on! Recently, a Land Library friend from Quebec donated one of the most remarkable books on bees and beekeeping that we have ever seen. Eric Tourneret’s Le Peuple des Abeilles will always have an honored place on the Land Library’s shelves!

The text may be in French, but Tourneret’s photographs speak volumes. Many of the photos give such an upclose view of the bee’s world that you’d swear Tourneret strapped cameras to the backs of worker bees:

A steady stream of incoming bees, with pollen baskets full.

In some ways our personal inability to read the text liberated us to focus on the incredible patterns of another world:

Eric Tourneret also turns his lens on an equally fascinating creature: the beekeeper:

Le Peuple des Abeilles tells the tale of beekeepers employing both modern and traditional techniques. There are wonderful photo-essays on the capture of wild swarms, and the never-say-die efforts of urban beekeepers — including a few atop the Paris Opera House!

Eric Tourneret has seen a hidden world through his lens, and we’re happy he shared it:

If you don’t speak French, or if you someday hope to speak Bee, you’ll really enjoy this short clip!

Someday we hope a publisher issues an English translation of Le Peuple des Abeilles — but then again, we loved the visual odyssey we’ve been on, ever since Eric Tourneret’s classic book arrived from our generous friend in Quebec!

One of the first pieces the Land Library ever posted was on the great French entomologist, J. Henri Fabre. We have no doubt that he would have loved Le Peuple des Abeilles as much as we do:

–The Insect Man

and for more great books on Bees and Beekeeping, be sure to check our archive!

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The City Alive

The New York Times just reported some truly exciting and unexpected news. The New Yorker‘s next issue will feature a new essay by the legendary author Joseph Mitchell. The newly discovered “Street Life” is the first published work by Mitchell since 1964.

Joseph Mitchell, who died in 1996, was the great wandering and listening soul of New York City. True, you won’t find any of his titles at local Nature Centers, but his sketches of the urban scene shows us a writer immersed in his home landscape. From Fulton Fish Market to McSorley’s Saloon, Joseph Mitchell observed his given plot of land keenly and compassionately, like the ideal naturalist that he was. Back in 1992, his work, long out of print, was resurrected in a wonderful anthology, Up in the Old Hotel.

There are too many to choose from, but here’s one of our favorite passages from that collection:

The Rivermen, from Joseph Mitchell’s The Bottom of the Harbor

I often feel drawn to the Hudson River, and I have spent a lot of time through the years poking around the part of it that flows past the city. I never get tired of looking at it; it hypnotizes me. I like to look at it in midsummer, when it is warm and dirty and drowsy, and I like to look at it in January, when it is carrying ice. I like to look at it when it is stirred up, when a northeast wind is blowing and a strong tide is running — a new-moon tide or a full-moon tide — and I like to look at it when it is slack. It is exciting to me on weekdays, when it is crowded with ocean craft, harbor craft, and river craft, but it is the river itself that draws me, and not the shipping, and I guess I like it best on Sundays, when there are lulls as long as a half an hour, during which, all the way from the Battery to the George Washington Bridge, nothing moves upon it, not even a ferry, not even a tug, and it becomes as hushed and dark and secret and remote and unreal as a river in a dream.

The success of Up in the Old Hotel led many publishers to reprint Mitchell’s earlier books:

My Ears Are Bent, a collection of Joseph Mitchell’s earliest (pre-New Yorker) pieces, mostly from the 1930′s. Old Mr. Flood, a slim volume centered on the comings and goings of Manhattan’s Fulton Fish Market.

And two of his all-time classic collections: The Bottom of the Harbor, and McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon.

The Rocky Mountain Land Library will always have these books on our shelves, for the simple fact that Joseph Mitchell is one of the greatest writers of people and place that we know!

In the last few days, New Yorker editor David Remnick commented on the exciting find of new writings from Mitchell’s pen: “What’s so poignant about [the excerpts] is the sadness of the incompletion but the brilliance of the voice. There’s an ambition in the voice; the voice is becoming more Joycean. He’s looking outward, but all of these pieces are very interior. He’s at the center of it.“

“When things get too much for me, I put a wild-flower book and a couple of sandwiches in my pockets and go down to the South Shore of Staten Island and wander around awhile in one of the old cemeteries down there.” the opening passage of the classic Mr. Hunter’s Grave, from The Bottom of the Harbor.

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Rachel Carson’s Witness to Nature

Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature by Linda Lear
By age 11, Rachel Carson was a published author, with the appearance of A Battle in the Clouds in St. Nicholas Magazine. She always wanted to be a writer, though her subsequent life pulled her in many other directions. Linda Lear tells a compelling story of Rachel Carson’s early career as a marine biologist, and her sudden emergence as a bestselling author with the 1951 publication of The Sea Around Us.
But the most dramatic period lay ahead, culminating in the landmark book, Silent Spring, and her ensuing battles with the pesticide industry. She bore these responsibilities well, despite a series of health setbacks that made Silent Spring an excruciating labor. (Paul Brooks, Rachel’s editor, counted it as a miracle that the book was ever published).

Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature recounts the trials of Rachel Carson’s life, but also the great joys: her love of nature and the sea — and her constant sense of wonder (and obligation) that never diminished.

Rachel Carson will always be an indispensable author for the Rocky Mountain Land Library. We have a complete set of her books, along with several biographies for readers of all ages!

Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature by Linda Lear, Rachel: The Story of Rachel Carson by Amy Ehrlich & Wendell Minor, Rachel Carson: Preserving a Sense of Wonder by Thomas Locker & Joseph Bruchac

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With Your Head in the Clouds

Clouds connect people to the wonders and workings of nature, whether you are in Manhattan on a beautiful spring day, or on the Great Plains as the weather suddenly shifts. But the trick is, you have to look up, you need to have a healthy degree of cloud awareness. And that is why we so admire the life’s work of Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of The Cloud Appreciation Society, and the author of The Cloudspotter’s Guide: The Science, History, and Culture of Clouds, and his latest book, The Cloud Collector’s Handbook.

Throughout both books (and no doubt throughout his daily life) Gavin Pretor-Pinney can’t help but have fun. He describes The Cloud Appreciation Society as a global organization that fights “blue-sky thinking” wherever they find it.

Pretor-Pinney’s books are overflowing with wonderful photos and illustrations. Along the way, you’ll quickly realize that you are learning the clouds from the most entertaining teacher you’ve ever had. But there’s poetry as well. Here is the grand Manifesto of The Cloud Appreciation Society (wacky and incredibly sane at the same time):

–We believe that clouds are unjustly maligned and that life would be immeasurably poorer without them.

–We think that clouds are nature’s poetry, and the most egalitarian of her displays, since everyone can have a fantastic view of them.

–We pledge to fight ‘blue-sky thinking’ wherever we find it. Life would be dull if we had to look up at cloudless monotony day after day.

–We seek to remind people that clouds are expressions of the atmosphere’s moods, and can be read like those of a person’s countenance.

–We believe that clouds are for dreamers and their contemplation benefits the soul…

And so, we say to all who’ll listen: Look up, marvel at the ephemeral beauty, and live life with your head in the clouds.

Over the years it has been excruciatingly hard for the Land Library to pass by any good book on clouds. It’s as simple as that, and the reason why we have so many fun books, such as these:

another “visual manifesto” from Gavin Pretor-Pinney: Hot Pink Flying Saucers and Other Clouds from The Cloud Appreciation Society, and Richard Hamblyn’s Extraordinary Clouds: Skies of the Unexpected from the Beautiful to the Bizarre.

The Book of Clouds by John A. Day, and For Spacious Skies: A Sketchbook of American Weather by Eric Sloane.

Richard Hamblyn’s The Invention of Clouds: How an Amateur Meteorologist Forged the Language of the Skies, a fascinating biography of Luke Howard, the London chemist who gave the world the three basic cloud family names: cirrus, cumulus, and stratus.

and, from our Waterton Canyon Kids Nature Library, here’s another biography of Luke Howard, The Man Who Named the Clouds by Julie Hanna, Joan Holub, and Paige Billin-Frye, along with a terrific cloud awareness guide for kids: Shapes in the Sky: A Book About Clouds by Josepha Sherman & Omarr Wesley.

Kelvin-Helmholtz Cloud over Jervis Bay, Australia, photo by Giselle Golog.

As many of you know, the Land Library is based in Denver, Colorado. Occasionally (and once at our bus stop) we have spotted a dramatic white wave breaking across the Front Range. With those fond memories, we were especially excited to read these words from Gavin Pretor-Pinney’s The Cloud Collector’s Handbook:

“Looking just like enormous waves breaking on the shore, it is rare, fleeting and the favorite of cloudspotting surfers. A well-defined Kelvin-Helmholtz is a crown jewel in many a cloud collection, for it requires the cloudspotter to be blessed with eagle-eyed sky awareness and sheer blind luck.“

The Land Library loves its continued blind luck, and we hope you give yourself a treat and visit The Cloud Appreciation Society’s website for much, much more — including an amazing photo gallery. Click here for terrific photos of Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds!

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North America’s Sea of Grass

The Great Plains are a vast expanse of grasslands, stretching from Texas north to Canada. Here are two invaluable reference books that form the heart & soul of the Land Library’s prairie collection.

Recently published, the Atlas of the Great Plains (by Stephen J. Lavin, Fred M. Shelley, & J. Clark Archer) includes over three hundred original full-color maps, accompanied by the authors’ insightful commentary. This atlas explores all aspects of our great North American grasslands, including Native American history, modern settlement patterns, ecological regions, agricultural trends, and much more.

Published in 2004, the Encyclopedia of the Great Plains(edited by David J. Wishart) has already risen to the level of a classic reference work. This thick tome contains over 1,300 entries stretched over 940 pages, with illustrations and photographs throughout.

Both books point to the rich natural and cultural history of the Plains. Clearly, North America’s midcontinent is much, much more than flyover country!

Scanning our new arrival shelf of prairie books, we were struck by how many titles found their inspiration from the flowing grasslands of the Canadian Prairie. Books such as these:

Grass, Sky, Song: Promise and Peril in the World of Grassland Birds by Trevor Herriot, River in a Dry Land: A Prairie Passage (an earlier book by Trevor Herriot, and the winner of the Saskatchewan Book of the Year Award), and Small Beneath the Sky: A Prairie Memoir from poet Lorna Crozier — full of landscape, family, and stories centered around Crozier’s childhood in Swift Current, Saskatchewan.

And here’s two older books, both born north of the border:

Prairie: A Natural History by Canadian naturalist Candace Savage, and Wallace Stegner’s classic childhood memoir Wolf Willow: A History, a Story, and a Memory of the Last Plains Frontier (an absolute favorite of the Land Library’s Book Club!).

Last year, the Land Library published a series of posts on the prairie. Here’s a quick look:

–Prairie Voices: Red Cloud and Beyond

–The People of the Prairie

–The Natural History of the Plains

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