The Gardening Library

You may be surprised to learn that I have few gardening books in my home library.  The ones I do have tend to be reference books: an Encyclopedia of Trees and Shrubs, a pictorial encyclopedia of Annuals and Perennials, a reference guide to iris and roses.  I also have a battered, stained copy of Crockett’s Victory Garden, my dad’s gardening bible. He used to read it in the bathtub, fall asleep, and drop it in the water. I’d find it spread out on the furnace in the basement to dry.  My copy has wavy, water stained pages.  I have a few organic growing manuals, mostly for commercial farmers, and books like Clara’s Kitchen and Five Acres and Independence, two books on self sufficiency that I love.

Recently, however, I’ve been hankering for some good gardening books.  This Friday marked the town of Pamplin’s first library book sale. I love library book sales! In Floral Park, the annual library sale was one of the highlights of the year for me.  I’d find many of my favorite horse books, for instance, now retired from the library shelves and offered for sale; for a quarter (hardcover) and a dime (paperback) I’d pedal home with a bicycle basket filled with books.

Pamplin’s town library is located in an old train station depot, and half of the building was open to the sale. Picture a train station straight out of the turn of the last century, complete with an old rusty pot bellied stove in the corner, brick walls, and sanded wide plank floors.

We found reference books for our respective writing, and then I pounced on some gardening books. I came home with a new encyclopedia of flowering houseplants, a large volume on vegetable gardening, and a really interesting book chronicling the lifecycle of flora and fauna on a farm.  The author’s purpose  is to encourage people to learn the plants, animals and natural cycles on their own farms.  Now that’s someone whose book I will enjoy.

There’s nothing like a library book sale to find new treasures. Some people do not enjoy used books, but half the fun is opening them and finding mysteries inside.  For instance, the previous owner of the houseplant -encyclopedia must have had many problems with her plants, for typed on some yellowing 1970’s style stationery was a log of her house plant’s health, what she did to rescue it, and the results. Unfortunately, the results trail off in February, so I can’t tell you whether her log abruptly stopped because her plant recovered or if it ended up on the compost pile.