In 1871, Marianne North, a brilliant artist with a keen interest in botany, set-forth to travel the world on a quest to paint indigenous plants in their natural habitat. Encouraged by her friend Charles Darwin, North travelled by boat, train, mule, foot and palanquin to every continent except Antarctica. She circled the globe twice over fifteen years and accumulated an extensive and valuable collection of more than eight hundred paintings, which today comprise the esteemed Marianne North Gallery at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, London. North--high-spirited, indefatigable, and brave--also kept detailed journals, which were posthumously published in three volumes in the late 1800s. Abundant Beauty collects the most engaging writings from those journals in one edition, including rich descriptions of botanica and delightful accounts of local people and customs from her sometimes dangerous travels. Abundant Beauty is a fascinating and informative read for botanists, gardeners, historians, and armchair travellers.

Transform Your Landscape! Around the world, up and down every street, people are eager to take positive action right in their own yards. This radically new, yet ancient type of garden has it all. These Transformative Landscapes: Are abundant with fruit and vegetables,Fight Climate Change by sequestering carbon ,They're easier and more resilient than you ever imagined, They care for wildlife and native species,They regenerate healthy soil,They clean and steward water,They build real wealth and family security,Help you reconnect with nature and community,And - at their best - they are astoundingly beautiful. With the right designs and techniques, we can have all this on just a few hours per week. This beautiful book guides you on the rewarding adventure of transforming your landscape into a beautiful, bountiful paradise:Over 100 tried and true designs, ideas, and projects you can adapt to your own project,Cutting edge, research-based techniques for abundant gardens without plastics, poisons or petroleum,Hundreds of pictures, infographics, and illustrations,Dozens of recommended edible plant profiles, including perennial edibles, tree crops, and vegetables,Beautiful designs for gardens, forest gardens, hedgerows, farms, plant "guilds," ponds, Tips and techniques for creating landscapes that are as beautiful and spiritually fulfilling as they are abundant with food.

The Beautiful Music All Around Us presents the extraordinarily rich backstories of thirteen performances captured on Library of Congress field recordings between 1934 and 1942 in locations reaching from Southern Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta and the Great Plains. Including the children's play song "Shortenin' Bread," the fiddle tune "Bonaparte's Retreat," the blues "Another Man Done Gone," and the spiritual "Ain't No Grave Can Hold My Body Down," these performances were recorded in kitchens and churches, on porches and in prisons, in hotel rooms and school auditoriums. Documented during the golden age of the Library of Congress recordings, they capture not only the words and tunes of traditional songs but also the sounds of life in which the performances were embedded: children laugh, neighbors comment, trucks pass by. Musician and researcher Stephen Wade sought out the performers on these recordings, their families, fellow musicians, and others who remembered them. He reconstructs the sights and sounds of the recording sessions themselves and how the music worked in all their lives. Some of these performers developed musical reputations beyond these field recordings, but for many, these tracks represent their only appearances on record: prisoners at the Arkansas State Penitentiary jumping on "the Library's recording machine" in a rendering of "Rock Island Line"; Ora Dell Graham being called away from the schoolyard to sing the jump-rope rhyme "Pullin' the Skiff"; Luther Strong shaking off a hungover night in jail and borrowing a fiddle to rip into "Glory in the Meetinghouse." Alongside loving and expert profiles of these performers and their locales and communities, Wade also untangles the histories of these iconic songs and tunes, tracing them through slave songs and spirituals, British and homegrown ballads, fiddle contests, gospel quartets, and labor laments. By exploring how these singers and instrumentalists exerted their own creativity on inherited forms, "amplifying tradition's gifts," Wade shows how a single artist can make a difference within a democracy. Reflecting decades of research and detective work, the profiles and abundant photos in The Beautiful Music All Around Us bring to life largely unheralded individuals--domestics, farm laborers, state prisoners, schoolchildren, cowboys, housewives and mothers, loggers and miners--whose music has become part of the wider American musical soundscape. The hardcover edition also includes an accompanying CD that presents these thirteen performances, songs and sounds of America in the 1930s and '40s.

This classic book introduces readers to a 40-day prosperity plan which points out to readers what "money" really is and teaches a six-step program which shows them how to free their minds from limiting beliefs.

It began as a contest; it turned into something much more. Ten photographers were charged with the task of capturing the vibrancy and beauty of the Great Lake State during the spring season of 2009. The resulting pictures of people, places and landscapes became an unparalleled collection, perfect for any Michigander's coffee table.

With empathy and warmth, the charismatic host of "Living His Life Abundantly" addresses the important role today's Catholic women must embrace in bringing life, both physical and spiritual, into the church. Step by step, Johnnette Benkovic shows readers what it means to be in relationship with the Lord. She taps into the lives of godly women in church history to show readers how to bring healing and life into their world.