I want to welcome Linda Hornberg to Books R Us. Linda is surfing the blogosphere with I Read Book Tours. She has written a guest post just for my readers. Enter below to win a signed copy of the book. Thanks for stopping by.
Book Title: Picture A Garden by Linda Hornberg
Category: Middle-Grade Non-Fiction (Ages 8-12), 160 pages
Genre: Children's Non-Fiction.
Publisher: Peanut Butter Publishing
Publication Date: January 28, 2025.
Content Rating: G: Topics only include gardening and being outdoors.
What springs to mind when you hear the word GARDEN? Would it surprise you to learn that the world just outside your door is overflowing with art, science, humor, drama, intrigue, and colorful personalities? Nature has you surrounded. It's time to come out with your hands gloved and your feet galoshed, ready to sow some spinach, pick a peony, mulch a maple, root a rose, graft a grape, stake a spruce, water a walnut, and hug a hemlock.
Set down your screens and take up your trowel.
Adventure awaits!
The stories inside this book are nearly all true. I have never actually seen a chorus line of worms decked out in feather boas, but I can guarantee that there are plenty of real-life larvae out there merrily chewing up the scenery. You can turn orange from eating too many carrots, and there really is a tiny plant island called a liverwart--although there probably are no tiny castaways living on it. Welcome to gardening for smarties. Never stop thinking, wondering, and digging, and you’ll never be bored. Have fun.
My Wild Life
The Makings of a Crazy Cat Lady: Linda R. Hornberg
I call myself a zookeeper, because I am always feeding, grooming or cleaning up after some manner of creature —but, thankfully, no elephants. My own menagerie, domesticated and non, consists first and foremost of a highly privileged indoor family of Felis domesticus (their civilized habits hinted at, if not guaranteed, by their species name). The current rescued housecat population includes Marnie, an eight-year-old Torbie (that’s a tortoiseshell/calico with an overlying tabby print on its coat), five-year-old ‘tuxedo’ Simone, and three of her four kittens: Paloma (Siamese), Soliban (Burmese) and Soliban’s twin, Mirabai Willow. (The fourth kitten, tortie Fiadh, lives with her adoptive family.) The kittens turned four in September, but they will always be kittens in my mind, because I met them when they were approximately two hours old, and tiny enough to fit two to a hand, if Simone would have let me. Two rescue dogs, Pocky (a Basenji/Jindo mix) and Holly (a hairless, blind Poodlet), round out the domestics. Outdoors, I support a mini-murder of crows, a wayward seagull I call Larry, and a growing family of squirrels I have given up naming, apart from Ursula, R.D. and Naachi. (All domestics were spayed at the earliest opportunity.)
I am not completely crazy. I do not attempt to groom the squirrels. I do feed them, and — before I figured out the drawbacks to doing so— I did allow them to set up household in the eave of my sunporch (after two attempts at removing the nesting material, I realized how persistent and determined a desperate, expectant squirrel can be: enter Ursula, mother of one). Ursula’s little kit, whom I dubbed R.Diaz (Latina humor), provided enormous entertainment with his (her?) energetic antics in the squirrel run, during the month that I was stuck at home during COVID lockdown. Ursula will still come straight up to me and take a peanut from my fingers. Naachi (identifiable by the small, square punch out in her ear —remnant of a past fight or mating bite—appears daily at the platform feeder. Do not imagine that I have only these two daily regulars at my platform feeder; the other half dozen or so (only six, seems like more…) simply lack clear identifying marks. Larry the Seagull has been a neighborhood resident for at least
fifteen years, and is recognizable by his voice. He and the crows get bread crusts and kitty kibble, tossed onto the carport roof. The crows are descendants of noble King Cracky — now gone, but remarkable for his habit of standing between me and my vehicle, to offer thanks in multiple ‘words’, or remind me on days I forgot to toss some bread. He never left me shiny treasures, but I have kept some feathers. Of course I hang suet and seed feeders, too. (I refrain from naming the songbirds. What do you take me for!)
Linda is a permanent transplant to Seattle, where she remains an enthusiastic gardener, insatiable reader, unapologetic punster, and incurable cat lady. Please do not offer her your strays.
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