One of the few infallible rules of gardening is that no garden can have too many bulbs.
~ Anna Pavord

Bulb, by Anna Pavord. While browsing in a bookstore on a dank winter day, I splurged on this big, gorgeous book. Pavord wrote in her acknowledgements, "I spend more on bulbs than on clothes," and I immediately felt exonerated.

Pavord is English and writes from a European perspective but her expertise knows no boundaries. "This book is about the most glorious group of plants on earth: bulbs, corms, tubers, and rhizomes…A single perfect crocus or fritillary, growing in a terra-cotta pot, gives as much pleasure as a crowd of daffodils…In these pages you will find about 600 of my favorite bulbs…"

Another allure of the book is the exquisite photography by Andrew Lawson and Torie Chugg. Wow. If you weren't a bulb lover before reading and/or beholding this book, perhaps you will be.

Dead Silence, by Randy Wayne White, is the 2009-published book in the Doc Ford series. Besides the regular cast of characters and the enviable location of Dinkin's Bay off Sanibel Island, Florida, White created an intriguing and forceful young hero with a Minnesota connection. Will Chaser is a 15-year-old who had been living on a reservation in Seminole County, Oklahoma, until he was moved north to Minnesota. Will "had done some dumb things. He'd been kicked out of three schools and arrested twice. Math was weak, his spelling worse. But he wasn't stupid. Ever." In addition, Will inherited "a condition–a gift perhaps–that's been well documented. It's called synethesia…a heightened awareness."

Waking Up in Eden, by Lucinda Fleeson, is a well-researched, well-written, sort-of journal Fleeson wrote when she lived on Kauai, Hawaii, and worked for the National Tropical Botanical Garden.

Roads Less Traveled, by Catherine Watson, is on loan from my friend Jan. Watson was the Minneapolis StarTribune's travel writer for more than 30 years and this book is a compilation of her adventures/newspaper stories during those years.

This also appeared in the Askov American, Askov, Minnesota.