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.