Flower Talk

A cantankerous talking cactus reaveals to readers the significance of different colors of flowers in terms of which pollinators (bees, bats, birds, etc.) different colors "talk" to.

With his penchant for nature, science, writing and photography, the desert ecologist, Dr Joh R Henschel, could not help but document the conversations about the natural world with his friend Zophosis Moralesi, a Toktokkie as beetly as can be. The Toktok Talkie articles were first published as weekly newspaper columns between 2011 and 2013, and these are now collated in this book. In it, Joh reveals some of his musings about nature and his observations of peoples' relationships to it. He deftly interweaves the human defiance of nature, symbolised by the Ancient Mariner, with nature's many values and ultimate power of having the last word, presented by a humble messenger, the Toktokkie beetle, Zophosis moralesi. His first experience of the Namib in 1977 became love at first sight. Since then he has been conducting research in the Namib and several deserts world-wide, reported in numerous scientific papers and technical documents. After spending over three decades in Namibia, Joh and his wife, Theresa, moved to Kimberley in South Africa in 2013, where he joined the National Research Foundation to continue arid land research through the South African Environmental Observation Network (SAEON).

What Art Is Like is a comic, serious inquiry into the nature of art. It provides welcome relief from prevailing modes of explaining art that involve definitions, philosophical claims, and critical judgments put forth by third parties. Scrapping all such chatter, Miguel Tamen’s aphoristic lark with aesthetic questions proceeds by taking its technical vocabulary only from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. According to Tamen, it would be ridiculous to think of poems or paintings or films or any variety of artistic production as distinct from other things in the world, including people. Talking about art should be contiguous with talking about many other relevant and important matters. Tamen offers a series of analogies and similes to help us imagine these connected experiences. One, taken from the analytical table of contents where the book is writ small, suggests that “understanding a poem is like understanding a cat; neither ever says anything back and you can’t keep a conversation with them. All art is like this, but not only art is like this; nature, the past, numbers are also like this.” Tamen takes up many central issues in aesthetics and the philosophy of art, including the connection between art and having fuzzy ideas about art, the mistake of imagining that art-decisions are put forth by art-courts where you are both judge and jury, and the notion that what happens with art also happens to you.

Billy is a lad. He's a laugh, he's loud, he behaves badly and Sarah is besotted with him. But after another 'accident' involving Billy's temper, Sarah's face and a night in the A&E, Sarah's friends Martha and Flower decide that it's time to take action. What should they do? Reason with him? Send him to anger management classes? Hire a hit man? Martha and Flower have problems of their own: Martha is seven months pregnant by one of three possible blokes (she did this mainly to wind up her sanctimonious vicar father); and hippie Flower's career as a stand-up comic is more sit-down after some nasty encounters with south London's finest hecklers. Will Martha survive single-motherhood on a council estate in need of a peace-keeping force? Will Flower find the perfect put-down? And will they sort out Billy before he gets to them first...? Jo Brand tells it like it is in her darkly comic and sharply observed debut novel.

Presents simple techniques for an early spring garden of color profiling 30 hardy annual flowers.

Conveying how collections and displays can become the focus for much discussion and debate in circle time, and how they can be linked to other play areas and themes running throughout the nursery, Displays and Interest Tables helps you to: demonstrate the value of young children's efforts stimulate learning through two-and three-dimensional displays create exciting visual features for your setting.

The restoration of the flower gardens at Monticello in 1941, sponsored by the Garden Club of Virginia, was the result of Edwin Betts's scholarly research and Hazlehurst Perkins's practical gardening skills. Thomas Jefferson's Flower Garden at Monticello presents the evolution of Jefferson's ornamental gardening efforts with an analysis of the flower gardens as they were planned, planted, and ultimately restored. No early American gardens were as well-documented as those at Monticello, which became an experimental station, a botanic garden of new and unusual plants from around the world. Betts and Perkins communicate here the nature and sources of Jefferson's intelligent venture into ornamental gardening. The third edition includes a revised plant list, annotation of the more than 100 species cultivated in the flower garden, and new illustrations.