Amy Loves Hunky Gardeners...and so do I!

Yeah, I bet THAT got your attention!

Amy Stewart, who's blogs I recently found, wrote two of the most entertaining and educational books I've read in quite awhile. I found her first book, From the Ground Up, while casually browsing through the gardening books at Borders a year or so ago. Usually I'd go for the more technical manual type books, telling me specifically about each plant, vegetable, critter, etc...lots of glossy pics always get my attention! But for some reason I was in the mood for something more of a story telling about gardening. There's a section for that! Borders has a shelf or two in the gardening section that just has these little narrative gardening books, or garden-related poetry, etc... Hm, did I really want to read something like this? I lucked out! I picked up Amy's From the Ground Up, started reading, and LOOOOVED it! I was already learning about gardening, and it was great to read about someone elses experiences. And trust me - I cried when I read about her cat passing away... I've already loaned it out to a couple coworkers, and would gladly force it on anyone else!

In my search online for Amy Stewart, I found she was about to release another book - The Earth Moved - and it was all about ...earthworms. Ok, anyone else reading this is gonna think "boooooring!" but hey, I have an incompleted Biology major in my past, where I LOVED LOVED LOVED the entomology classes, the local flora classes, etc. A book on worms sounded NEAT! So I pre-ordered it at Amazon and devoured it once it arrived. Poor Brett. I don't know how many nights I'd be reading in bed and hit him with all sorts of neat facts about earthworms. I tell ya, I STILL feel guilty about driving or walking on any sort of pavement!! (Yes, paved areas are bad for worms - did you know that? Granted, I'm way oversimplyfing the situation, but if I remember right, Amy wrote about how huge parking lots create dead zones underwhich worms can't/won't travel. And worms like to travel!)

Trust me - I'm not doing Amy's writings justice with my commentary here, but I just wanted to get the rough idea across. Annnnnyhow, long story short (too late!), I recently came across a few of Amy's blogs by accident, and over on Dirt she has a little bit about why British gardening magazines are so much better than ours (well, aside from price!). And she chose a nice little picture to accompany her blog entry that sums it up. We don't get to see much detail about the guy, but I'd say yum! (See the picture above - I hope she doesn't mind me swiping her pic, which I believe she swiped from one of her magazines) It just makes me want to grab my watering can and go water something! :)

Oh, and I already had an interest in wanting to keep chickens at some point in my life, thanks to magazine articles and Dawn & Drew, and now I find Amy's got an entire blog dedicated to her Humboldt Hens! Neat! Just think how cool it would be to have our own eggs...much healthier and sturdier than the crappy eggs we get from the grocery stores...

OK, yes, I'm willing to admit I have odd interests. Leave me alone. Now don't you want to go read a cool book?