A Bouquet of Words #rabtbooktours

 

Express Yourself Through the Language of Flowers

 

Nonfiction / Crafts & Hobbies/ Flower Arranging; Gardening

Date Published: October 24, 2023

 

 

 The Language of Flowers

It’s well-known that a red rose symbolises love, but what’s not as well-known is that all flowers have special meanings.

Flowers can express everything from thank you and I’m thinking of you to welcome and good luck. There are flowers with celebratory meanings and those that are more fitting for comfort during sorrowful times.

Using flowers to create and send messages is the language of flowers.

If you are someone who gives flowers as gifts, plants flowers in your garden, or uses flowers at events, A Bouquet of Words is for you.

Here you’ll discover just how easy it is to choose the perfect flowers to share the exact sentiments you want.

Inside you’ll find:

• The flower catalogue, your go-to guide for flowers and meanings
• Speciality lists for quick reference
• Helpful tips straight from a former florist (me)
• Blank pages to make notes and keep records
• Calendars with special floral dates throughout the year
• Flower quotes and floral memories

 

Before you know it you will be making your gifts more personalised, your events more memorable, and your gardens more meaningful.

 

About the Author

 Mary Kelava, a dual citizen of Canada and the UK, has released her first book, award-winning 'A BOUQUET OF WORDS - Express Yourself Through the Language of Flowers'.

Combining her experience as a former teacher and florist, she has created a lovely and charming reference for those new to the world of flowers or for flower enthusiasts looking to deepen their knowledge.

Mary has taken this historic way of communicating and modernised and simplified it for today’s world. Her friendly, conversational writing style will capture your imagination and soon have you speaking in the language of flowers.

 

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Vegetable Gardening from the Ground Up Book Review and Giveaway

 

Vegetable Gardening From the Ground Up

by Stephanie Suesan Smith

Genre: How-To, DIY Gardening 

Beginning vegetable gardeners can harvest bountiful produce the first year.

Even a beginner can succeed without enduring trial and error methods by following the clear, concise instructions in Vegetable Gardening From The Ground Up. In this book, Dr. Smith explains the keys to:

Understand basic climate factors for your site

Choose a traditional, raised bed, container, square-foot, or lasagna garden

Ready the garden plot

Order the seeds and plants

Start the potential vegetables correctly

Fertilize the plants

Mulch your flourishing plants appropriately

Control pests, diseases, and other problems

Safely use pesticides

Harvesting your bountiful produce

Safely store the harvest

Save seeds and/or trade them

Care for the garden plot between seasons

If you’re ready to discover the joy of growing your own nutritious and delicious food, click the buy button now!

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Like the Victory Gardens in World War II, more and more vegetable gardens are springing up in back yards and vacant lots across the world. It is possible to grow an abundance of food in a small space. However, just like the recipe for rabbit stew that starts “First, catch a rabbit,” it is necessary to research and plan before the planting. This book guides you through those steps so you can grow food for yourself and your family.

On first glance, setting up your garden by following these steps may seem like a lot of trouble. Keep in mind you only have to do that once to have years of wonderful, flavorful produce. Harvesting the vegetables you grow will be worth the initial hard work. Nothing from a grocery store or vegetable market can compete with fresh, healthy, just picked vegetables from your own garden.

A Quick Overview

Starting a new garden can be daunting. It needn’t be, though. Follow a few simple steps correctly, and you are ready to plant your seeds. What steps, you ask? These steps:

Chose a site

Plan your garden

Prepare the Soil

Add Organic Matter

Irrigation and Drainage

Problem Control

Pesticide Safety

Seed Saving

Cover Crops

Here is a brief discussion of each step. I will discuss them more in depth later in the book.

Review

When I saw the title and description of the book, it sounded like the guide my son and I have been looking for to start a vegetable garden in the backyard of the rural home we moved into two years ago. As lifelong suburbanites dwelling in apartments, townhouses, or mobile homes, we never previously had a place to garden. Now we do, but getting started is daunting, particularly considering my disabilities and Colorado's notoriously bad soil.

This book breaks the steps to growing a vegetable garden down into easy-to-follow steps that make the process less daunting even to a complete newbie. The question about how to deal with difficult soil is answered in this passage about planting in a raised-bed garden.

Raised Beds

At the most basic, square foot gardening is a form of raised bed gardening. A frame that is no more than four feet wide and preferably four-foot (or some increment such as eight or sixteen) long is built. That is placed over some opaque material such as newspaper to retard weed growth and filled with a rich mixture of soil and compost.

The book is practical and written in plain English. With sensible steps to follow, I hope that this may be our year to begin a low-maintenance garden filled with delicious vegetables. We generate a lot of cardboard from necessary deliveries and forays to Costco, so the "lasagna gardening" method sounds like a perfect way to put the excess cardboard to good use. 

I look forward to trying out the methods detailed in this well-written beginner's guide to gardening. The book easily earns five out of five stars.

Stephanie Smith, PhD., is a Master Gardener who was born in Dallas, Texas, longer ago than she cares to mention. Stephanie began gardening as soon as she could stick an onion start in the ground. Her father taught her to grow things to eat, and that is her specialty. She is a member of the Texas Master Gardeners Association and the Dallas County Master Gardener Association. She was awarded 2014 Master Gardner of the Year for Hunt County, Texas. Things of beauty are also important, so she grows African violets, is a member of the African Violet Society of America, and a member of the Alpha African Violet Society of Dallas.

Stephanie was first published by a national magazine in 1990 and has since been published in several periodicals. Gardening articles have appeared in Animal Wellness, 903 Magazine, and the Greenville Herald Banner, among numerous other places. Articles and technical papers in psychology make up the balance of her periodical publications.

Stephanie received a B.S. in psychology from Texas Christian University and a M.S. and Ph.D. in psychology from Texas A&M University. Currently, she resides in Dallas with her toy poodle, Jewel.

Visit Stephanie's vegetable website, https://stephaniesuesansmith.com , and read her blog, view her photographs, and participate in the conversations going on there. Feel free to ask gardening questions or leave a comment on one of the blog posts. Her garden content writer website is https://gardencopywriter.com. She has many gardening articles online and her portfolio is at https://gardencopywriter.com/garden-writing/.

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