You know, people do reviews of all the new books that come out, but sometimes you just need to reach back and grab a classic. Because books become classics for a reason.  In my Literary English Bachelor’s Degree experience (yeah, that was not really a useful degree to get. I should have realized that after the 3000^th time someone asked me “Oh, so you’re going t o be a teacher?”, that perhaps getting a degree in which the only job prospects most people saw were a job that needed another degree with it was a bad idea… but I have digressed) books become classics because they so insularly capture an idea or concept that no other book need be written on the subject.  The Secret Garden is one of these books.

Can I say that I fell in love with book before I actually read it?  I watched it on TV as a young girl, as a Hallmark special. In my memory, it was well done (though I have not seen it since and back then I thought the A-Team was well done too so you can’t really trust my childhood perceptions) and I immediately looked for the book.

When I was 11 years old reading that book, the draw was the mystery and fantasy of The Secret Garden.  At that time, I could not have cared less about all the silly flowers in the garden.  I loved the fact that Mary, Dickon and Colin had the COOLEST secret clubhouse in the whole wide world.

Since then, I have read the book to each one of my boys and I am reading it to my youngest now, which is why it is on my mind.   I think they too love the fact that the children in the book have this place to go that the grown-ups don’t know about, a place where children could make things happen without the meddling of adults (and we meddle alot these days, you know).

As an adult, I am struck by how well Frances Hodgson Burnett captures the heart of a budding gardener or even a long time gardener who has been locked away for the winter.  While there are many passages in the book that convey this feeling, I love this one about when Mary first finds the garden:

“Yes, they are tiny growing things and they might be crocuses or snowdrops or daffodils,” she whispered.

She bent very close to them and sniffed the fresh scent of the damp earth. She liked it very much. “Perhaps there are some other ones coming up in other places,” she said. “I will go all over the garden and look.”

She did not skip, but walked. She went slowly and kept her eyes on the ground. She looked in the old border beds and among the grass, and after she had gone round, trying to miss nothing, she found ever so many more sharp, pale green points, and she had become quite excited again.

“It isn’t a quite dead garden,” she cried out softly to herself. “Even if the roses are dead, there are other things alive.”

She did not know anything about gardening, but the grass seemed so thick in some of the places where the green points were pushing their way through that she thought they did not seem to have room enough to grow. She searched about until she found a rather sharp piece of wood and knelt down and dug and weeded out the weeds and grass until she made nice little clear places around them.

“Now they look as if they could breathe,” she said, after she had finished with the first ones. “I am going to do ever so many more. I’ll do all I can see. If I haven’t time today I can come tomorrow.”

She went from place to place, and dug and weeded, and enjoyed herself so immensely that she was led on from bed to bed and into the grass under the trees. The exercise made her so warm that she first threw her coat off, and then her hat, and without knowing it she was smiling down on to the grass and the pale green points all the time.

Now tell me that is not exactly how you feel the first time you step outside into your garden after the wind, cold and snow of winter has receded.

Anyway, my point is that this winter, while you are huddled and miserable and gardenless in your house (or maybe that is just me), pick up a copy of The Secret Garden. Relive what it was like to be a child (without having to involve silly things like vampires and werewolves) and remember what it will be like to find your own “secret” garden in the spring.

Imagine a world where Monsanto was not just a multi-national conglomerate, but an international super power capable of warring with and enslaving entire nations.

Imagine a world where genetically modified plants are used as harrowing weapons that can kill entire populations – just so that a company can make more money.

Imagine a world where the equivalent of script kiddie hackers (for you not in the biz, these are amature hackers, like the graffiti vandals of the computer world) can “hack” a plant’s DNA and create deadly or frightening changes.

Then imagine trying to live an everyday life in this world.

This is the world created in the book The Windup Girl.

It was rather ironic that this book arrived at the library this weekend for me to pickup. I had ordered it weeks ago after it was recommended as an interesting read in the steampunk (though it’s more post apocalyptic cyberpunk, but whatever) genre. It was not mentioned to me that plants played such a vital role in the story. Considering that I wrote about heirlooms versus hybrids just a few days ago and that genetically modified crops are the next level in that discussion, it was a very timely and interesting read.

The jury is still out on my opinion on genetically modified plants, but this book did provide a lot to think about.

And while gardening specifically was not discussed in the book, there was some allusions to the idea that things grown simply for beauty were no longer possible and things grown at home to feed yourself were just downright dangerous to your health and general state of being alive.

Now imagine a world where you could not garden and you realize that this book is not just sci-fi but horror as well.

Regardless, an interesting read if you are looking for something to read and ponder this summer.

*Just a note – the book does contain certain amounts of graphic sexual violence as the main character is a genetically engineered “companion” turned sex slave. Just so that you know that ahead of time and don’t yell at me later for not warning.

I have learned an important thing about tillers recently. That, in terms of number of friends you have (like the flesh kind, not the electronic kind), they have a similar effect as to pickup trucks. When people find out you have one, suddenly, they discover an overwhelming need to call you up and see how your life is going, and it just so happens to be that they have a garden they need tilled (or a house full of possessions they need transported, in the case of trucks).

This year, I was asked to review the Troy Bilt Super Bronco CRT Garden Tiller. And I will be honest, I did not use it myself.  I was afraid of it.  The thing is a beast, and in tough soil, I was fairly certain that I was going to lose control of it and take out a fence, a shrub and important pieces of my anatomy.

So, for the safety of myself and those around me, I let my husband use it and I will report his findings securely from  behind a computer screen.

To start off with, the tiller was bang easy to assemble. Pop the handle on and you are ready to go.  That being said, my husband thought that in terms of how well the tiller itself chewed through the soil, the handle felt a little flimsy.  But, being said after that, no matter how tough the ground was, there was never an issue.

We tilled my garden, which already has been broken in during past years with no problems.  The tiller moved smoothly.  I think that if I had this to do again, I would have gone with a slightly smaller tiller though.  I have raised beds and turning it around in those beds was a bit tricky sometimes. 

So we tried it next in my neighbor’s open garden. Again, soil that had been tilled before.  My husband loved that and turning was not a problem.

Then we took it to my friend’s “fire-sale, bought in a foreclosure action and the yard was abandoned a year before the house was” yard.  This was basically virgin, hard clay soil, and my husband had a blast.  It was like watching a cowboy ride a bronco.  The soil did its best to throw my husband and the tiller and my husband and the tiller handled it. The tiller chewed through the ground and left a lovely, smooth bed in its wake. 

All in all, we were impressed and pleased.

Then the tiller broke.  It seems the spring on the pull cord had snapped.  My hubby, being a hands on kind of guy, took the pull cord assembly apart and shook his head like a doctor who had lost the patient.  I called the company.  And to be very honest, they were quick like bunnies to get the tiller fixed for us.  No fuss, no questions and we were rolling (um, I mean tilling) again in no time.

All and all, I liked this tiller. My husband loved the tiller. And while it did break on the 3^rd time we used it, it gave me a chance to see their customer service in action, and they were very nice and prompt.

So the tiller is now at my in-laws and will then go to my husband’s grandparents and my other neighbor has asked if I could let them borrow it, just for an afternoon.  I am now officially the “friend with a tiller” which is the kind of friend with benefits that gardeners like.

If there is one gardening implement that has drawn lines down gender preferences, it would be the weed wacker. I should know, I now own 3 of them. My most recent weed wacker acquisition came from Troy-Bilt (being the Troy-Bilt’s TB57, Lithium Ion String Trimmer) who wanted me to try it out and let you all know what I think about it. And I felt very qualified to do this because, well, I own so many of them now.

My weed wacker collection started out with me going and buying a weed wacker we were in need of one. So I drove myself down to the hardware store and bought one. I bought one that I liked, an electric one, the kind you plug into the wall like a vacuum cleaner and look like a confused housewife wandering around your yard.

My husband was not pleased. He had no desire to look like a confused housewife (he was doing just fine looking like a confused husband, thank you) and he then went out a scoured yard sales until he brought home a rather large gas powered one.

He hated the electric one because he thought it was prissy. I hated the gas powered one because it was heavy and stank. Often, the neighbors would watch the street theater as my husband and I casually wandered around the yard and weed wacked with our own weed wackers trying to prove, non-chalantly, that our weed wacker was the better weed wacker.

Now, I have this weed wacker from Troy-Bilt. It is a battery operated weed wacker and seems to address the issues that both my husband and I had with each others’ weed wackers. Now, technically, my husband is not here to speak his mind on it, but, like all wives before me, I feel that I am entitled to but my words in his mouth.

The Troy-Bilt weed wacker was light enough for me to carry around, and did not have the allegedly sissy electric cord leash. It certainly had the power to cut through the massive patch of thistle that had sprung up around my compost bin (it was like a scene out of Texas Chainsaw Massacre watched on a TV where the color is really off).

I do have to say that I did have some difficulty putting it together. I can honestly say that in this case, the problems started when I skipped the step my husband usually takes in skipping reading the directions. The directions confused me and that made it difficult to put the weed wacker together quickly. I probably would have been better off just putting it together without the directions.

But, once it was together, it worked very well. And the really nice thing about it being battery operated was that when I noticed I had missed a spot, it was no more difficult than picking it up to correct the problem. No lugging the power cord back out. No struggling to get the thing started again.

So now, I have to figure out what to do with the other two weed wackers. I suppose I could always paint them and list them on Craigslist as a matching set of his and her weed wackers.

Tis the season for mental garden preparation. There is snow on the ground and ice on the roof, but right now, the heart of a dedicated gardener is singing the song of spring. And good marketers know that we are doing this. This can be evidenced by now daily piles of mail that are being dumped outside my door. I think this is my mailman’s subtle hint that due to current catalog volume, I need to add myself to a national do-not-mail list.

This is also the time of year that I get inundated with review requests. I actually have to turn some down these days, lest all you read is reviews of product. Helpful as that might be ( and as much as I like free stuff), it would probably get a little old a lot fast.

But when Burt’s Bees asked if they could send me some product to take a look at… Well, there is free and then there is good free. Burt’s Bees qualifies as damn good free.

So, a few days later, among the pile of seed catalogs, a rather non-descript box was also dumped. And it was filled with all sorts of fun little goodies.

About half of the products I cannot make a solid commentary on, beyond to say they smell absolutely fabulous.

But the other half of the products I can comment on, so here is the quick, fast run down.

Burt’s Bees Muscle Mend – I started a class at the gym called Boot Camp. Enough said. Love this product.

Burt’s Bees Miracle Salve – Winter does a number on my skin. Like, I could be a stand in on The Mummy sort of dry skin. This has done a great job dealing with that.

Burt’s Bees Res-Q Ointment – Not sure what to say on this one. Used it on a burn, but whether it helped or not is hard to say. Still smelled really nice.

Burt’s Bees Garden Gloves – I don’t usually use garden gloves. Way too fussy for my taste. But, I do normally keep a pair around because sometimes there just is that really nasty weed that refuses to budge and has spikes from hell. These seem very nice for that. Tough rubberized palms with a light knit back. Not too heavy but tough enough for what I need.

And then, as the bestest thing that came in that box….

They sent me Burt’s hat. Well, maybe not Burt’s own hat (I imagine a real gardener’s hat is a little bit yucky), but that kind of hat that he wears in the pictures, they sent me that hat. It will be a stylin’ summer in the convertible wearing that hat. Gardeners driving past will bow down to my keen sense of style.

But until the weather gets warm enough to enjoy my garden or my convertible, all I am left with is spending hours unscrewing the caps on these Burt’s Bees products and inhaling deeply.

This month, I received a pair of Muck Boots gardening shoes to try out in the garden. The only problem is that really, I am a barefoot gardener. I risk heel and pinky every year hoeing the weeds in naked tootsies. The soles of my feet are so calloused that even the Canada thistle shies away for fear that my foot will crush it without ever knowing it was there.

When I said I would look at these shoes, I had every intention of trying them myself just for the purposes of the review. But when they came in the mail, The Daily Garden rubber gardening shoes were of such a high quality, that I felt it just was not fair. Why should I keep such a nice pair of gardening shoes when I would wear them twice and then sacrifice them to the hungry monster I lovingly refer to as the foyer coat closet? Surely there was someone in my life who would be more deserving (and apt to make good use of the shoes) than I was.

That was when I thought of my mother. She has been on a quest for several years now in search of a perfect gardening shoe. It wasn’t that she couldn’t find comfortable gardening shoes. Nearly all of them are comfortable. A gardening shoe that is not comfortable tends to be converted to a planter rather quickly and therefore ceases to be a gardening shoe. It was just that, well, they all had breathability issues. Gardening shoes do tend to be overwhelmingly made from easy to rinse but solidly formed plastic or rubber. In my family, one cannot trap one’s feet into a solid confine and not expect there to be a few air quality issues when we remove them. For those who have not put two and two together, this would be why I frequently go barefoot.

But I had high hopes for these shoes for my mother. These shoes are made from the ubiquitous solid rubber, but they had a foam like lining. It felt much like the memory foam that is so popular these days. The packaging claimed that this lining made for superior breathability within the shoe.

My mother tried them on and she was pleased with the way the felt on her feet. She compared them in comfort to a pair of Crocs, with that soft yet firm support. The foam lining is largely responsible for that. The lining also did a good job of keeping the feet cool.  She liked the look of the shoe as well and was impressed with the quality feel of the shoe. This is a heavy, well made shoe and you can feel it.

She did note that because the shoe is so heavy, she is not sure how well she would like it in the heat of summer. She felt that for the Fall and Spring, it was defiantly a great garden shoe, but she would have to try it out during the summer (now a whole year away) before knowing if the shoe would be too heavy.

She did end up with blisters on the backs of her ankles after wearing them for a few hours. This is not so much a fault of the shoe, but rather a warning that if you do purchase these shoes, you will want to protect your ankles until you have built up the appropriate calluses.

All and all she was pleased. She felt that this time, she may have found the perfect gardening shoe. Perhaps now the EPA can stop sending those annoying notices to the house during the gardening season.

Once again, the blogging gods have seen fit to send my way the manna of product reviews. This month, I received the Mosquito 86 to review. As was pitched by the representative of the company, the Mosquito 86 is “a new, innovative way to eliminate mosquitoes in a manner that has previously only been offered through professional mosquito and pest sprayers that use commercial sized foggers or truck-mounted systems.”

I.E. It is commercial grade pesticide.

I am not an organic gardener, though I do try to stick to mostly organic methods, mainly because I am a cheap ass part Scottish woman and you can’t get much cheaper than organic. But, I am not above using chemicals if I feel they are worth the cost and effort. So I said I would look at this product.

Beyond that, being a gardener/nature lover/without air conditioning, I regularly eat dinner with my family outside in the summer. Mosquitoes put a crimp in that lifestyle and I don’t particularly like to decide between battling blood sucking insects outdoors or being heated to the same temperature as my food indoors.

This seemed like it might be a good solution. Why not give it a try?

The box arrived as promised and my eldest son and husband assembled the contained system with no problems and without once having to refer to the directions, not that they would have if they needed to, but it was nice that the situation never came up.

While they assembled, I did read the directions and the box, and read the following “Kills mosquitoes (check), wasps (check), yellow jackets (check, check, check, check) and bees (ummmm…). Fortunately, it is late in the season. Most of my flowers are dead or fast fading, so bees don’t make forays into my yard at this time.

My eldest, who is 12, donned the system and my husband and I immediately started to sing the theme song to Ghostbusters, though we were quickly reminded of our age when our son asked “what’s that song?” *Sigh* The loss of the high entertainment of my childhood is tragic.

And for those who may be concerned about the effects of the chemicals on my son, remember, this is the same stuff that your local city (at least mine, anyway) drives around and squirts into your front yards via truck. Here in Ohio, mosoquitoes are a concern due to West Nile.  This chemical has been found safe at reasonable levels (which we will be well below) for humans and pets.

My son sprayed the yard and a few hours later, we sat down to dinner. I have to admit, dinner seemed more mosquito free. It was certainly more yellow jacket free, and they had been a serious problem at dinner as of late.

So, would I recommend this product? That is a tough call. They had me right up until the box said “bees”. I need those in my garden, so this is not a product I could use regularly or even often. September would be the only month where I could even think about using this product. But, most of suburbia is not as dependant on bees as myself but they are certainly as plagued by mosquitoes and yellow jackets as I am. The average suburban home owner would find this to be an effective product.

In the meantime, I was pleased to see that Columbia Pictures has decided to release yet another Ghostbusters. At least then my movie references to my children will seem a little less obscure.

Yesterday, I reviewed the book “Planting Green Roofs and Living Walls”. After I read the book, I had the delightful opportunity to ask one of the authors or the book, Noel Kingsbury, a few questions. I skipped over the availability question this time. While he is quite adorable, I thought that the audience at large (that would be you) would be interested in some more relevant information. So here it goes…

What is the best use of either green roof or vertical gardening (or both) that you have seen? Why does it win that distinction?

Best green roofs I have seen have been in Germany where you have a rich dry meadow type habitat that looks after itself but is really bio-diverse with masses of drought-tolerant wildflowers. And one in the north of England which Nigel Dunnett designed, with a 12cms substrate, very flowery, but that is quite a generous substrate in a cool climate. The only vertical gardening that works is Patrick Blanc’s work in Paris, but it is very expensive and not an easy thing to manage. Far more practical is the use of climbers to cover vertical surfaces – which I know is not done much in the US, but is very common over here in Europe.

What advice can you give to a person who would like to implement a green roof in the typical American suburban neighborhood? Keep in mind, that these neighborhoods typically have ordinances that discourage new or atypical appearances on homes.

Ahh… the USA… land of the free! Where if the city won’t get you for being different the neighbours will. Why are you guys such a nation of conformists? 

A really inspirational gardener here is a chap in Chicago…. Marcus de la Fleur , despite the name a German and a good European freethinker. Check out his website at www.delafleur.com/168_Elm/ for how to convert a rented 1920s house in a classic suburb. He got his landlord interested, has a noticeboard for the neighbours to read, has open days. In other words he is saying he is doing something different and happy to share his ideas with others. If it is about saving water, saving energy etc. then it usually gets people interested.

What are the top three difficulties the typical home gardener may face or should consider when installing a green roof?

1. finding a sympathetic builder or other construction professionals
2. working out a suitable plant mix for your locality
3. sourcing an economic supply of suitable plants

What would be your favorite plants to use in either a green roof or living wall?

Depends entirely on where you are. There is a lot of potential i should think in smaller native American bunch grasses like Stipa tenuissima, as they are drought resistant. Thrifts, armeria species do well and are very decorative. Dwarf alliums, ie. garlics do well, are very colourful and spread by seeding.

I’m going to talk about facadegreening, ie. using climbers. there are few, unfortunately which are evergreen. If you live in the south you can do fantastic things with evergreen ‘jasmine’ type things, not jasmines per se, but species with white and heavily scented flowers: holboelia, stauntonia, trachelospermum etc. Otherwise there are deciduous but much hardier species, a lot of native vines, ie. vitis species or other related Asian species have attractive foliage and fantastic autumn colour, and of course all your parthenocissus species which self-cling to walls.

Bonus IF question – If you could be transformed into any kind of plant in the world, which would it be and why?

Maybe an English oak (Quercus robur), stand there for a very long time and watch the world go by.

I received Planting Green Roofs and Living Walls in the mail to review and I was surprised to discover that I had actually already read it. Well, kind of… I read the 1st edition, which is kind of like the difference between King Kong (1933) and King Kong (2005). Both are great in their own right, but the second edition was updated, with additional bells and whistles.

I first read this book after I had the fantastic idea that I would put a green roof on my house. I went to the library, got every book that I could find on the subject and read them all voraciously. I enthusiastically showed the pictures in the books to my husband who then poured a huge bucket of cold reality on my green roof. I didn’t quite understand everything he said, but there were terms like lode bearing and roof angle and hauling A LOT of dirt. I stopped listening at that point. Construction terms are just not my forte. While I rule the roost on many things, my husband has the final say on building projects. He did promise that if we put a shed in the back, I could green roof it to my heart’s content.

My failed fantasy projects aside, green roofs are an awesome idea. Take a look at this aerial view of Cleveland. Notice something missing? Like the color green?

These buildings cover the surface of the land with metal and man made rock. They absorb heat like a sponge and deflect precipitation like a Scotch Guard. But, many times they have roofs that are flat and serve no other purpose than… than… absorbing heat and deflecting rain. They are not so much bad as a fact of modern life.

The idea of green roofs is that we can have our cake and eat it too. You cover that flat unused building tops with a meadow (or other kind of garden) and return the square footages of green space in a given area to what it once was. Even if the new green space is a few dozen stories up.

Really any building, short or tall, can take advantage of green roofs and Planting Green Roofs and Living Walls is a good place to start to learn more about it if you are thinking about converting a building or building a new structure with a green roof.

I will warn you that this is a heavy book, in terms of knowledge and verbiage. It is no really a guide for the casual interest, but a book that you would probably read, feel confused for half of it but more confident in the idea when you handed it over to your architect and sat down to talk about it.

What you will not find in this book is a step by step guide on how you can convert your roof to a green roof. That’s because a green roof is not a weekend project (unless you intend to put it on a shed in your back yard). The average green roof requires the input of an architect, who can assess the needs of that style of roof and recommend the appropriate changes to the building, which will probably need to be implemented by a professional contractor.

The book does provide a handy plant guide to help you select vegetation for a green roof.

I still want to build a green roof on some kind of structure, though it will probably end up being a shed that I will someday get built in the backyard. But, if you are building a new home and you are looking to incorporate some green ideas, give green roofs and Planting Green Roofs and Living Walls some consideration.

P.S. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There is info in the book about living walls too. I didn’t have any walls I wanted to cover with plants, so I kinda skimmed over that info.

P.P.S. Stop back tomorrow and I will have an interview with Noel Kingsbury, one of the authors of this book.

Rain barrels tend to be ugly, monstrous things that you hide in the back corner of your house or risk the neighbors wondering when you are going to be sharing the moonshine you are distilling. I have seen these beasts for sale at the garden centers. All blue or orange and scary looking. Well, they are not all that scary looking, but the $300 price tag is. Something that expensive should not be that ugly or so obviously not natural looking. How do you hide a huge, ugly barrel???

So when I was asked by Garden Supermart if I wanted to review a rain barrel, I was a little apprehensive. Where would I fit an ugly giant barrel in my little bitty yard?  What if it was a blue barrel?  There is no hiding a blue barrel. But they assured me that their rain barrels were neither ugly nor blue. I was delighted and I agreed. And thus began the Great Rain Barrel Postal Adventure.

If you live in the US, you know that the incompetence of the United States Postal Service can sometimes achieve epic proportions. If ever there was a poster child for why government monopolies are a really bad idea, the USPS is it.  Individual emplyees can be good (my mailman Leon and my Grandpa who worked for them being two examples) but the organization as a whole leaves something to be desired. Case in point, it appears that the USPS has the singularly unique ability to lose a package that is larger than your average baby elephant.

After one month, 3 trips to the post office and one exasperating conversation with a Postal Supervisor, they were finally able to locate the rain barrel, which had apparently had been sitting in the middle of their sorting room the entire time, playing a rousing game of Captain Obvious hide and seek.

Anyway, I finally got the rain barrel home, and I do have to say that I was duly impressed. It was not blue nor was it ugly. As a matter of fact, it was terracotta colored and pretty enough that I elected to install it under a downspout on the front of my house, conveniently located near my container plants.

The barrel itself is made from a formed plastic but two different neighbors commented on the fact that they had mistaken the rain barrel for a genuine terracotta jar. It is light enough for me to carry with one hand, but did not feel flimsy or cheap.

I was a little disappointed by the fact that the rain barrel did not come with directions. While there is only a little assembly involved, I did have to correct my husband when he installed it as he figured that top screen was simply an extraneous part thrown in to waste money. While he would have assumed that anyway (as he does not read directions), it would have saved my 10 minutes of arguing with him on the matter if I just had a picture to point to.

And as a note, not good or bad, the hose that leads off the barrel is a very tight fit. Very difficult to get on, but that and the hose clamp ensure that your barrel will not leak.

The price of the largest size rain barrel is comparable to the price of the ugly blue barrel I saw at the garden center the other day, which means you can get style and functionality for the same price.  The one I have is actually less than that as it sells for $159.99 plus shipping.

All in all, I was pleased with my new rain barrel. My only real complaint is that you might want to check and see if they can deliver it via UPS or FedEx, who have to do their jobs in order to stay in business.