Gardens! Plants! Growing things! Can we do it? Probably not! But we read books about it anyway. We talk about houseplants we’ve killed, the appeal of beautiful pictures of plants, and failing to grow things. Plus: Another chance to enter our contest!

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In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | Jessi

Books We Read (or tried to)

• Lone Pine Publishing
• 37 Houseplants Even You Can’t Kill by Mary Kate Hogan
• Bunch Up!: A Step-By-Step Guide for Budding Florists by Irene Cuzzaniti, Irene Rinaldi
• Public Natures: Evolutionary Infrastructures by Marion Weiss and Michael A. Manfredi
• Cougar Annie’s Garden by Margaret Horsfield
• Tiny World Terrariums: A Step-by-Step Guide to Easily Contained Life by Michelle Inciarrano and Katy Maslow
• Terrariums Re-Imagined: Mini Worlds Made in Creative Containers by Kat Geiger
• Terrarium Craft: Create 50 Magical, Miniature Worlds by Amy Bryant Aiello, Kate Bryant, and Kate Baldwin
• The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Obsession, Commerce, and Adventure by Adam Leith Gollner
• Genius of Place: The Life of Frederick Law Olmsted by Justin Martin
• Art of the Olmsted Landscape by Bruce Kelly

Books We Mentioned

• Monster Manual
• Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky
• Vanilla: The Cultural History of the World’s Favorite Flavor and Fragrance by Patricia Rain
• Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World by Dan Koeppel
• Secrets of Saffron: The Vagabond Life of the World’s Most Seductive Spice by Pat Willard
• American Pests: The Losing War on Insects from Colonial Times to DDT by James McWilliams
• Bee Time: Lessons from the Hive by Mark L. Winston
• Delicious in Dungeon by Ryoko Kui
• Rutabaga the Adventure Chef by Eric Colossal
• Blood Flag by Steve Martini

Links, Articles, and Things

• Vellum (“is prepared animal skin or “membrane” used as a material for writing on”)
• Hooker’s Onion
• Folly  (“is a building constructed primarily for decoration, but suggesting through its appearance some other purpose, or of such extravagant appearance that it transcends the range of garden ornaments usually associated with the class of buildings to which it belongs”)
• Legends of the coco de mer (Wikipedia article)
• Rambutan (after more research, Matthew thinks he loaded Longan onto the truck)
• Our list of potential genres for the podcast
• Photos of our plant babies

Questions

• Do you read books about gardening? How do you choose them?
• How many houseplants have you killed?
• What’s your favourite plant?

Contest!

To celebrate 15,000 total downloads of our podcast we’re having a contest! Retweet one of our tweets about episode 34 or episode 35 of this podcast any time during August, 2017, and you’ll have a chance to win some books or comics!

Prizes include Moonstruck #1, Moonshine vol. 1, I Hate Fairyland vol. 2, Howtoons: Tools of Mass Construction, Fierce Kingdom by Gin Phillips, Run by Ann Patchett, and Island of the Blue Dolphin by Scott O’Dell (plus probably some other stuff).

We can neither confirm nor deny that this is extra stuff we have from ALA and other conferences. (Though all the above listed titles are unread.)

Number of prizes will depend on number of entrants.

Check out our Pinterest board and Tumblr posts for all the Gardening, plant, etc books we read, follow us on Twitter, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, September 5th, when we’ll talk about Podcasts.

Then come back on Tuesday, September 19th, when we’ll be discussing Experimental Fiction!