Scoring a New Group of Garden Books!
Most weekends my friend Lisa and I head out for estate sales. The spoils of our journeys vary from week to week: antiques, kitchen equipment, decorative items and often books. Estate sales, I’ve discovered, are great places to find gardening books.
Last summer I brought home a treasure trove of eight books that from a friend’s mother’s collection. Another estate sale unearthed a couple yearbook of agriculture volumes, one on trees from 1949 and one on soil from 1957.
With the changes we’re seeing in our great outdoors thanks to climate change and the damage that invasive species are doing to our environment I’m looking forward to digging into these books as the winter winds keep howling to get a feel for what has changed since the original writers penned them.
In addition to the Yearbook of Agriculture volumes, my estate sale find topics range from organically controlling bugs in your garden to “The After-Dinner Gardening Book”. That one, in particular, promises to be a fun read since the chapter I opened to talks about the writer’s adventures in trying to grow a coconut palm in a New York City apartment.
Another is a 1948 edition of “Taylor’s Encyclopedia of Gardening”, a book that was first published in 1936. I can’t wait to see what all is included in this volume and how the advice given within stacks up with today’s science.
If you live in a northern clime as I do, staying in with a good gardening book is a great idea as the roads are slippery and the winds are bitter. Stay safe and enjoy the reading adventure.
Creative and targeted programs that make an impact are the hallmark of experienced marketing professional Ruth Steele Walker. Focusing on results that improve the bottom line, she accelerates projects from conception to implementation with a mastery of writing, production, placement, budgeting and coordination.
During more than 25 years with Foremost Corporation of America, the nation's leading insurer of manufactured housing and recreational vehicles, Walker consistently produced effective communications programs that resulted in increased net written premium. Her expertise in crisis communications was a vital part of Foremost's exemplary customer service in the wake of hurricanes, floods and earthquakes. Walker specializes in communications targeting the 50+ demographic, with an emphasis in communications for the 65+ segment.
Among other achievements, Walker developed communications for the merger of Foremost and Farmers Insurance, addressing audiences including customers, employees, trade and consumer media. For Foremost's 50th anniversary, she created a celebration program of internal and external promotions, special events, recognition and a 162-page commemorative book.
Earlier in her career, Walker was a newspaper reporter, a TV and radio producer, and worked in national sales and traffic at network TV affiliates. Walker earned a BA in journalism from Michigan State University and an MS in communications from Grand Valley State University.
She and her husband Scott operate a small vineyard in Michigan's Leelanau Peninsula, producing premium vinifera wine grapes. The vineyard has been the largest local supplier for Suttons Bay wine label L. Mawby, recently named one of the world's top producers of sparkling wines.
