Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“With the mystery genre booming in print and on screen at present, I have had no problem satisfying my cravings for crime.”

Gardening Can Be Murder: How Poisonous Poppies, Sinister Shovels, and Grim Gardens Have Inspired Mystery Writers by Marta McDowell

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Are you in the mood for a light and breezy book about how gardens and gardeners feature in crime and mystery writing? If so, I have the book for you. I am not a gardener, in fact my great grandparents who ran a greenhouse would be shocked at my inability to understand the finer points of plants and their needs and five years of working on a living history farm did not improve the situation. But it did introduce me to the author of Gardening […]

Lawns are dead, man

Lawns Into Meadows: Growing a Regenerative Landscape by Owen Wormser

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This short, easy to read volume is a call to arms to put away your lawn mower and embrace a less tidy meadow. Owen Wormser is a landscape designer in the US Northeast, specializing in organic designs for residential and commercial spaces. Mowed lawn space across the US works out to roughly the equivalent of the state of Washington. Lawns were once a status symbol: owning land that didn’t need to be used for food production was a flex. While lawns can be beautiful, they’re […]

One person with a yard can do quite a lot for conservation

Nature's Best Hope by Douglas W. Tallamy

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CBR14 BINGO: New, because this is by an author I hadn’t read before BINGO: Minds, Adapt, Heart, Monster, New The extinction of species and the rapidly declining state of nature are problems that haunt me. I fear that I will live to see the day when the planet is no longer habitable, and I know I’m not alone. Yet most of us approach the problem with a feeling of learned helplessness: The problem is much too big and political for us to be able to […]

New meaning of “Till death do us part”

Taproot: A Story about a Gardener and a Ghost by Keezy Young

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Taproot: A Story about a Gardener and a Ghost is a different kind of story with Keezy Young mixing and matching magic and realism into a story of twists, turns, laughter, sadness and gardening. The results are a love story to die for. Blue is a ghost; Hamal is human and the chemistry between the two is burning them up! But of course, like said, one is dead and that can put a crimp into things. As we follow these two star crossed lovers, we […]

Dirty thumbs and online not-so-nice-people

Chloe #6: Green Thumb by Greg Tessier

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Chloe #6: Green Thumb by Greg Tessier  is a compilation of two stories about growing up and being the best you that you can be. In story one, Chloe and her friends tackle the school project of creating a garden at their school. Chloe at first does not want to get “down and dirty” until one of her friends shows her own much fun it can be. And from there Chloe figures out ways to make her school and home greener. While it branches off […]

Gardening to Victory

Gardens for Victory by Jean Marie Putnam & Llyod C. Cosper

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In a box my grandmother hadn’t opened for probably fifty years, she found a swath of old family documents, and in it was this book, Gardens for Victory, a comprehensive  guide to teach Americans how to  supplement their ration cards during World War II with sustainable gardening. We have no idea how the little pamphlet never got thrown away; the spine was very bent and the pages dog-eared, meaning my great-grandparents probably followed its instructions during the war for their own gardens. The fact that it had […]



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