Explains how to transfer pigment from fresh flowers directly onto specially treated muslin; includes instructions for eight projects and advice on starting a variety of others.

Growing Heirloom Flowers explains in simple terms how to grow the fullest, richest, and most aromatic blooms possible. Heirloom flowers have stood the test of time. Prized for their beauty, scent, hardiness, or other star qualities, these vintage varieties continue to capture our imaginations and decorate our gardens long after they first came to be. These flowers have experience, and now you can enjoy the experience of growing them. In Growing Heirloom Flowers, author Chris McLaughlin takes you on a tour of these alluring blooms, covering the benefits, challenges, growing requirements, and everything else you need to know about more than 40 heirloom flowers. Along the way, she offers tips, tricks, and creative projects for making the most of your heirloom garden, from arranging and preserving to dyes, drinks, and more. With a wealth of information and stunning full-color photography, this book is the perfect guide to adding heirloom beauty to your life.

Packed with delicious recipes, natural remedies, gardening tips, crafts, and more, this indispensable lifestyle reference from the popular blogger makes earth-friendly living fun. Whether you live in a city, suburb, or the country, this essential guide for the backyard homesteader will help you achieve a homespun life--from starting your own garden and pickling the food you grow to pressing wildflowers, baking sourdough loaves, quilting, raising chickens, and creating your own natural cleaning supplies. In these richly illustrated pages, sustainability-guru Kris Bordessa offers DIY lovers an indispensable home reference for sustainability in the 21st century, with tried-and-true advice, 50 enticing recipes, and step-by-step directions for creating easy, cost-efficient projects that will bring out your inner pioneer. Filled with 340 color photographs, this relatable, comprehensive book contains time honored-wisdom and modern know-how for getting back to basics in a beautiful, accessible package.

Helps you plan the space you have and how to think and model your outdoor space like an indoor space in terms of decorating style.

Winner of the 2016 IPPY Award Gold Medal for Home & Garden 40 down-to-earth ideas for inspired garden crafts, including containers, handmade gifts, outdoor lighting, holiday decorations, and more. Blending the pleasures of gardening with the joys of crafting, Garden Made showcases over forty projects to adorn your garden, beautify your home, or give as gifts. Following the natural cycle of the garden in all its seasons—yes, even winter!—these garden-inspired projects, made by hand and finished with finesse, are the perfect way to express your love of the garden in fresh ways. With full step-by-step instructions, as well as gardening tips and advice, Garden Made will inspire seasoned and novice gardeners, and everyone in between.

"The Country Almanac of Housekeeping Techniques That Save You Money is an empowering book that shows us all how to live healthier and greener, save money, take care of our homes and yards, and do it all ourselves! It would make a great gift for any homeowner."—Brigitte Mars, www.brigittemars.com, co-author of The Country Almanac of Home Remedies Our forefathers and mothers knew how to keep their homes clean and homey—and live richer while spending less. Many of today's products are expensive, bad for the environment, and don't work any better than Grandma's methods, which only cost pennies. The editors at Back HomeMagazine have collected hundreds of formulas for effective cleaning, gardening, and home maintenance—as well as ways our ancestors saved on heating bills, prevented costly repairs, and maintained a cozy, charming home with little besides ingenuity. Drawing on the advice and techniques of contributors across the country, this indispensable guide shows you the best ways to take care of everything in your home from wood floors, to tile, to stainless steel appliances--and how to get the longest life out of every household item from pots and pans to pillowcases. The Country Almanac of Housekeeping Techniques That Save You Money is chock-full of solutions, recipes, and how-to projects for living a simpler, cleaner life and keeping your home beautiful.

The first extensive study of the Gnetophyta division of woody plants, first published in 1929.

Gardening in Iowa’s Amana Colonies is the culmination of techniques that stretch back several centuries to central Europe, when adherents to a new faith called the Community of True Inspiration formed their own self-reliant communities. As a child of parents who were part of the communal life of the Amana Society, Larry Rettig pays homage to the Amana gardening tradition and extends it into the twenty-first century. Each of the seven villages in Amana relied on the food prepared in its communal kitchens, and each kitchen depended on its communal garden for most of the dishes served (the kitchens in Rettig’s hometown produced more than four hundred gallons of sauerkraut in 1900). Rettig begins by describing the evolution of communal gardening in old Amana, focusing especially on planting, harvesting, and storing vegetables from asparagus to egg lettuce to turnips. With the passing of the old order in 1932, the number of the society’s large vegetable gardens and orchards dwindled, but Larry Rettig and his wife, Wilma, still grow some of the colonies’ heirloom varieties in their fourth-generation South Amana vegetable garden. In 1980 they founded a seed bank to preserve them for future generations. Rettig’s chapters on modern vegetable and flower gardening in today’s Amana Colonies showcase his Cottage-in-the-Meadow Gardens, now listed with the Smithsonian in its Archives of American Gardens. Old intermingles with new across his gardens: heirloom lettuce keeps company with the latest cucumber variety, a hundred-year-old rose arches over the newest daylilies and heucheras, and ancient grapevines intertwine with newly planted wisteria, all adding up to a rich array of colorful plantings. Rettig extends his gardening advice into the kitchen and workroom. He shares family recipes for any number of traditional dishes, including radish salad, dumpling soup, Amana pickled ham, apple bread, eleven-minute meat loaf, and strawberry rhubarb pie. Moving into the workroom, he shows us how to make hammered botanical prints, Della Robbia centerpieces, holiday wreaths, a gnome home, and a waterless fountain. Touring his gardens, with their historic and unusual plants, will make gardeners everywhere want to reproduce the groupings and varieties that surround Larry and Wilma Rettig’s 1900 red brick house.

BIOLOGY IS THE STUDY OF LIFE Life is everywhere, thriving in the city and in the country, teeming in ecosystems around the planet—in deserts, oceans, and even the Arctic. And life is right outside your door! Backyard Biology invites children ages 9 and up to investigate living things—especially in yards, parks, nature areas, and playgrounds. Trivia and fun facts bring animals, plants, and microorganisms to life, in all their wonder. Readers become Nature Detectives with activities and projects that encourage children to make discoveries. Children will construct a plankton net to collect pond samples, and they’ll grow microorganisms in a Winogradsky Column. They’ll discover what mystery plants sprout from collected soil samples and build a rolypoly habitat. When children experiment with phototropism and geotropism, they'll discover the ways plants move. In Backyard Biology, children will scout out different habitats to observe and investigate—and do their part to protect them.

For more than 20 years, Crafts and Creative Media in Therapy, Fifth Edition has been an illuminating reference for the use of creative approaches in helping clients achieve their therapeutic goals. Carol Crellin Tubbs has included a range of craft and creative activity categories, from paper crafts, to cooking, to the use of recycled materials, and everything in between. Each chapter includes a brief history of the craft, several projects along with suggestions for grading or adapting, examples of related documentation, and a short case study. The text also features chapters on activity analysis, general strategies for implementation of creative activities, and documentation, as well as a chapter describing the relevance of this media from both historical and current occupation-based perspectives. In this updated Fifth Edition, the craft projects have been updated and numerous resources and links for more ideas have been added. There are new chapters on making therapy tools and crafting with a purpose, and the recycled and found materials chapter has been expanded in keeping with cultural trends. A flow chart has been added to each case study to help students better understand the process and rationale for tailoring activities for individual client needs, and project suggestions for working on specific performance skills or client factors are scattered throughout the chapters. Other additions include a behavioral observation checklist as an aid in evaluation and documentation, and several illustrations to help students distinguish between the use of occupation as means and occupation as end. This Fifth Edition also includes an updated instructors’ manual with additional resources and suggestions for lesson planning. Crafts and Creative Media in Therapy, Fifth Edition not only provides a wide assortment of craft ideas and instructions, but also provides multiple suggestions for therapeutic uses for activities in each category. It includes ways to grade activities to best achieve therapy objectives, and examples of documentation for reimbursement. For each craft category, there is discussion on precautions for use with certain populations, contextual limitations, and safety considerations. Information is presented in several different formats such as examples, tables, illustrations, and other formats to promote student understanding. Included with the text are online supplemental materials for faculty use in the classroom. . Crafts and Creative Media in Therapy, Fifth Edition is the foremost resource for using creative approaches in helping clients achieve their therapeutic goals and should be used by all occupational therapists, occupational therapy assistants, and recreational therapists.