Several weeks ago, I promised someone I would post these links about books pertaining to gardening, natural history and related subjects (which I interpret very loosely, and many of which inevitably relate to fragrant plants). These are wonderful old classics, many of which public libraries do not keep on their bookshelves. Most were copy-righted before 1920 and are therefore considered “open domain”, which enables them to be digitally available on the internet, free to all. In many cases, without free access, some of these books would disappear while rotting on some inaccessible book shelf. As long as they are read and appreciated, they will live. Books in print are inaccessible to many people these days, so ironically, the internet turns out to be a last hope of literacy for quite a chunk of the globe.
Regarding old books, many ideas / perspectives in these books are indeed out of date, but still contain some universal truisms or ruminations dear to any reader’s heart. Prior to 1920, the times were not as advanced regarding universal human and civil rights as now, so some attitudes unfortunately reflect that in some of these books (well, we do still have a long way to go, don’t we?).
In the section called Website Sources below, is an entry for the Gutenberg Project. It has many features, one of which has to do with my idea of floating text over artwork you put up on your screen as wallpaper. Actually, any text can be copied and pasted into a feature called the Notepad, which will then also enable the text to be “floated.” I hope you read that section and try out the idea - let me know if you run into any snags. I hope to add more artwork, as well as to extend this with a section with links helpful to homeschooling.
Regarding some of the following digital books, you might have to click on the refresh button a few times in order to download the book. It looks like a rectangle with green squiggles on a white background, and it’s located in the tool bar on top of your web page.
I would really appreciate anyone chiming in and adding to this - hijackers are all welcome! Regarding thread hijacking, I strongly believe that a thought should be like a walk through a mysterious garden.
Will post each section in a separate post below in this thread.
Free, online books related to gardening and a maaaajor etc.
POETRY, GARDENS AND FAIRY FLOWERS
http://faeriefae.50megs.com/faery_writings.htm
When’s the last time you read Shakespeare, Keats or Yeats? Well, they do have a way with words. Above is a web page with a large anthology of fairy poetry and literature. Of course, this all has to do with the magical and veers into gardens and nature quite a bit. Now, if the Baltimore City Public System can entice its middle school students into reading, writing, and thinking critically with Cosmo (Cosmopolitan?) magazine, why can’t we use fairies to entice our children to do the same with Shakespeare et al? If you find any writers you like in this site, be sure to see what else of their work may be on The Gutenberg Project and Online Books under the Website Sources section below.
I’m out of time to match fairy art with fairy tales, so I’ll just mention a couple of great fantasy artists not mentioned elsewhere in this article:
Kinuku Craft
John Anster Fitzgerald
Before I found this website, I had done some rooting about on the internet with the following books. Some of them are also on the above website.
DICKINSON, EMILY - THE COMPLETE POEMS
To read Dickinson’s poetry “floated” over related art, refer to the “Website Sources” section under Gutenberg Press. Some images to match with poems could be:
1) With Dickinson’s Chapt I Life, Verse “I’m nobody! Who are you?...,
match: Hokusai_FrogonOldTile_casemonashedu
From: http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/ukiyoe/ukiyoe.html
Scroll down and click on “Blighton’s flute solo ‘after Hokusai’”
Scroll down to save this image for this poem.
2) With Dickinson’s Chapt I Life, Verse III. “The nearest dream recedes,...
match with: Shoson_MorningGlory_japkunst_1910
from: http://www.japaneseprints.net/gallery.cfm
In the second column, scroll down and click on “Koson (140)”
You may need to refresh in order to download enough of this page.
This image is on row 20, 3rd one to the left.
With Dickinson’s Chapt III Nature, Verse II. “Will there really be a morning?”
match with: WallJosephine_AnEvenSmallerWorld_mrugala
from: http://fantasy.mrugala.net/Josephine%20Wall/page_01.htm
Click on first image
3) With Dickinson’s Chapt III Nature, Verse X. “Whose are the little beds...”
match with: GrimshawJohnAtkinson_KnostropHall_EarlyMorning_1870
from: http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/grimshaw_atkinson.html
Scroll down to “Pictures from Image Archives”
And click on “John Atkinson Grimshaw in the Art Renewal Center”
4) With Dickinson’s Chapt III Nature, Verse XI, “Pygmy seraphs gone astray, Velvet people...”
match with: Waterhouse_GatherYeRosebudsWhileYeMay_Athenaeum_1909
from: The Athenaeum (see below - website requires registration)
(Another source of these poems is: http://www.bartleby.com/113/ - very similar thing, but in order to “float” the text over an image, you need to copy and paste it to the notepad, directions below in appendix).
GRANDVILLE, JJ ILLUSTRATOR - THE FLOWERS PERSONIFIED
http://www.earthlypursuits.com/Books/OldBooklibrary.htm
After clicking on the above link, scroll a little ways down in the left column, and then click on “The Flowers Personified.”
The book unfolds through a series of links in the left column.
This is a fairy tale of how “the flowers became human and the stories of their human adventures.” If you click on www.google.com and then click on “Images” at the top of the page, and then type into the search box “J J Grandville” (with the quotes), you will find more of his flower fairies and sometimes better scans than those on earthlypursuits. Artcyclopedia may be another source, too.
KATHERINE MANSFIELD - has poems on website fairy anthology at beginning of this section.
Mansfield also has another work on The Gutenberg Project (see below), the book Garden Party. Perhaps one match for the garden party scene could be: RysselbergheTheovan_TheGardenofFelicienRopsatEssone_1910
from: The Athenaeum (see Website Sources below)
PS - Mansfield and von Arnim were cousins - interesting when you compare their writing styles.
MILLAY, EDNA ST. VINCENT - “A FEW FIGS FROM THISTLES” (poems)
http://promo.net/pg/
Type the author’s name in the search box, and again on next webpage.
Click on “A Few Figs from Thistles” and follow prompts to save the document (I choose the last category to use as a “floating text” over any artwork I may choose as wallpaper).
I realize there’s more to life than gardening, and her poetry certainly reflects that, but a great thing about open-domain poets whose works were published before 1920 and are now available free and online, is that they lived in a time when gardens were so common that they were more often a normal part of life than these days, and poetry and literature were more rich with garden metaphors and content, than now. The best of her poems were yet to come after 1920, so a trip to the library to find them would be well worth it. Some poems in this online form are:
“First Fig” - must reading for nightowls.
“Recuerdo” - must reading for anyone stuck on gridlock on the Bay Bridge who’d like to cope by imagining crossing the bay in pre-bridge days with the more poetic experience of a ferry. I have always loved the phrase she uses here, “...and the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.”
There’s a metaphysical, mystic artist who did a series of paintings that are a metaphor for the rising sun: Odilon Redon. Try reading Millay’s Recuerdo against a background (wallpaper) of RedonOdilon_ApollosChariot_1905_6 from The Athenaeum below.
“The Prisoner” - cute metaphor for each of us as a limited being
“Portrait of a Neighbor” - do any gardeners out there recognize yourselves here?
STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS - A CHILD’S GARDEN OF VERSE
http://promo.net/pg/
Type Robert Louis Stevenson in the search box, hit enter; then type Robert Louis Stevenson in author search box again, hit enter.
Wait for the webpage to download, and Stevenson’s books should come right up on your screen. Click on “A Child’s Garden of Verse”, and scroll down to a box titled “Formats Available for Download.”
Choose the bottom (usually) selection that says “Plain text, us-ascii, zip, etc. and click on “Main Site” (if you’re not in US, go to “Mirror Site”).
Next, click on save (not open) and type in author’s last name first, then title and hit Save. (By saving instead of opening at this time, you can right click on the file and do a virus scan before opening - a good habit to make in general).
You now have the book in a form usable as a “floating text” (see Gutenberg Press below), which you can “float” over related artwork as wallpaper.
For Victorian children’s poetry about flowers (like Stevenson’s “Night and Day” poems in this work), a wonderful flower fairy artist was Cicely Mary Barker. Much of her work can be found at:
http://www.flowerfairies.com/home/index.cfm?cid=2
At the top, click on “fun”
On the next webpage, in the left column, click on “Fairy Finder”
Next, click on the arrow of the box labeled “Season” - if you start with Spring, you’ll be able to visit all of the fairies on this site.
What makes this website special - especially for children - is that each flower fairy has a poem about her flower. You could cut and paste the poems into your own “floating box of text.” On my Dell computer with microsoft windows (2003), to do that, you would:
Click on Start
Click on All Programs
Click on Accessories
Click on Notepad
Now, you can cut and paste the poems into the Notepad - be sure to save
Save the images you like to a file on a disk or your hard drive
Then, left click on an image you saved to “Set as Desktop Background” which makes it wallpaper on your computer screen monitor (To expand or center the image, rather than have a bunch of “tiles” up on the screen, Click on: Start, then Control Panel, Double click on Display, click on Desktop, then go to Position and select whether you want Tile, Center or Stretch.).
Then, open the file you saved of the poems in Notepad form, and you can read it over or near the image on the screen (The Notepad text box can be “dragged” around the screen).
Another source of flower fairy art and poetry/musings is:
http://www.flowerfairies.com/home/index.cfm?cid=2
To go directly to Barker’s flower fairies, scroll down and type in her name in the right search box and click on search (or hit enter)
For a huge anthology of fairy poets and authors, click on Faeries - misc. and then scroll down and click on Faery Writings - Poems and Stories. (Some of the fairy tale books available on this site free / online are also available in floating text form from the Gutenberg Project (see below)
(Images and artwork are right above Faery Writings)
This site has a less comprehensive collection of Barker flower fairies, but some better scans.
There are better scans of Barker’s flower fairies, and they can be found by googling around a bit more, one of which has very few Barker images but the best scans: http://www.hadasyleyendas.com/barker.htm It’s in Spanish, but experiment, and you’ll find more very good scans of other fairy artists: (Click on Dibujantes, and 10 other fairy artists will appear (Josephine Wall and Outhwaite are especially good); Then, you could click on Hadas, and you will come to a few other galleries - the second one has more Barker flower fairies. This is one of those sites that really lends itself to the altavista toolbar ( http://us.altavista.com/web/tools - it just adds onto your existing toolbar, and among other things, suppresses popups).
Stevenson is also on:
http://www.kellscraft.com/childsverse.html
http://www.bartleby.com/188/index1.html
On both of the above websites, scroll down to “Garden Days” - begin with Night and Day, verse 1 and step through Stevenson’s portal to the enchantment of Otherwhen. Bartleby has more of Stevenson’s poems plus biography.
GARDEN BOOKS
ARNIM, ELIZABETH VON
Elizabeth and her German Garden
The Solitary Summer
(There is much to love about these books, but they are a product of cruel, hierarchic times when equality of human rights and opportunity for everyone was not as advanced as today in some parts of the world.)
http://promo.net/pg/
Type Arnim in the search box, hit enter; then type Arnim in author search box again, hit enter.
Click on Arnim, Elizabeth von (1866 - 1941) and hit enter.
Under “Formats available for download”, scroll down to the bottom choice where it says, “Plain text, us-ascii, zip, etc. and click on “Main Site” (if you’re not in US, go to “Mirror Site”).
Next, click on save (not open) and type in author’s last name first, then title and hit Save.
You now have the book in a form usable as a “floating text” (see Gutenberg Press below), which you can “float” over related artwork as wallpaper. Some paintings that are fun to use with the first book are:
With Elizabeth and her German Garden, September 15th entry:
Renoir_TheRoseGardenatWargemont_1879 ( from http://www.the-athenaeum.org/ - This website requires registration and encourages sharing of its images on the condition that you credit it as the image’s source) (where von Arnim talks about “standard roses” which we call tree roses.
Renoir_WomeninaGarden_1873 - garden path (see TheAthenaeum below)
Caillebotte_RosesGardenPetitGennevilliers1886 (see The Athenaeum below)
November 11th entry:
MilletJohnFrancois_TheSheepMeadow_Moonlight_b1814_75 (from: http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/millet_jean-francois.html - scroll down and click on CGFA - the painting will be there.)
Still under November 11th, where she muses about her grandfather’s flower garden:
BreckJohnLeslie_FieldofPoppies_1889 (from The Athenaeum below)(misnamed title)
December 7th entry, violets:
Vollon, Antoine_StillLife_BsktFlwrsFan_artrnwl (from: http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/vollon_antoine.html (Scroll down to “Pictures from Image Archives” and click on “Anton Vollon in the Artrenewal Center - image should be there.
January 28th entry: (different weather, but timeless winter scene)
BruegelPietertheElder_TheHuntersintheSnowDec20_rasmiel_1565 (from: http://www.artcyclopedia.com/ Type in Bruegel in search box and hit enter; click on “Pieter Bruegel the Elder”; Scroll down to “Pictures from Image Archives” and click on “Rasiel’s wallpapers.” Clicking on the highest resolution on Rasiel’s page will give you the best wallpaper
still January 28th entry - (snowy winter landscape at night)
HaanenRemigiusvan_MoonltWntrLndscp_artrnwl_1812_1894 (from: http://www.artrenewal.com/asp/database/art.asp?aid=365 )
April 18th, paragraph 3 entry: (dream of spring kitchen garden with iris on front edge)
Pissarro_VegetableGardeninEragny_OvercastSky_Morning_1901 (see The Athenaeum below)
BLANCHAN, NELTJE - THE AMERICAN FLOWER GARDEN
Bird Neighbors
Birds That Every Child Should Know
Wild Flowers: An Aid to Knowledge...(Gutenberg Project - See note under website sources)
Wild Flowers Worth Knowing (Gutenberg Project - See note under website sources)
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/
Under “BOOKS ONLINE” at the top, click on Author
In the search box, type Blanchan, Neltje and hit Enter on your keyboard
Several of her books come up in addition to the ones above.
Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neltje_Blanchan ) says, “Her work is known for its synthesis of scientific interest with poetic phrasing.”
In Chapter IV of The American Flower Garden ( http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/ - type in name of author in search box and follow prompts), there’s a lot of American garden history with some of the best photos illustrating her narrative I have seen. For lovers of heirloom flowers, there’s a list with more historical detail. This author is deservedly often quoted and excerpted in anthologies. Now’s your chance to read some of her her works in their entirety.
BURNETT, FRANCES HODGSON - THE SECRET GARDEN
http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/
Scroll down in the left column to “View all authors” and click on it. Next, scroll down to “Burnett, Frances Hodgson” and click on that. Next, click on “The Secret Garden”
This is a classic tale of the regeneration of the human spirit through bringing an abandoned garden back to life.
As far as I know, Gutenberg Press does not have this one, which is a shame, because this book would be perfect to “float” over the watercolors of Helen Allingham ( http://www.helenallingham.com/index.html )
COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR
“Frost at Midnight” - scroll down to Google under Website Sources below..
Another poem he is famous for is the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. For folks with visual and learning disorders - as well as the rest of us - this poem is an example of how something can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg (see below) as a MP3 file that can be listened to - not read. Alternatively, there is a file you can read as floating text over illustrations by Gustave Dore (see Artcyclopedia below under Website Sources).
Look for more of Coleridge’s poetry at links given below for Google, Bartlesby and Gutenberg.
ELY, HELENA RUTHERFURD - A WOMAN’S HARDY GARDEN
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/ely/garden/garden.html
You might need to click on the Refresh Button a few times in your tool bar to download this one.
EVERETT, T. H. - ROCK AND ALPINE GARDENS (North American Rock Gardening Society)
http://www.nargs.org/gardening/rockgardening.html#placement
A business-like, to-the-point book. If you like this one, I strongly recommend Lincoln Foster’s book on rock gardening, which to my knowledge is available in print. A very colorfully written book on rock gardening is Reginald Farrer’s My Rock Garden which may only be found second-hand now.
GRIEVE, MRS. M. - A MODERN HERBAL
http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/mgmh.html
Click on “Plant and Herb Index” and then click on the letters of the alphabet.
The book was written with herbs ordered by the alphabet, so you can either read the book from front to back or skip around according to which herb you most want to read about. On the home page, other sections of the book appear beneath the Plant and Herb Index.
HARDY, THOMAS “UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE” - gives new meaning to holly and ivy
http://promo.net/pg/history.html
See Gutenberg Press under Website Sources below. This is a very funny (to anyone who has ever whistled or sung or perfumed for the amusement of others in whatever capacity) and atmospheric tale of Christmas. This is an example of one of the books on Gutenberg Press that can be listened to as well as read.
JEKYLL, GERTRUDE - ROSES FOR ENGLISH GARDENS
http://www.rosarian.com/
Scroll down and click on “Gertrude Jekyll on Roses.”
This webpage has other literary links on roses and to the botanical paintings of roses by Redoute, Renoir, Veerendael, Sargent and one of the Brueghels
MAXI’DIWIAC (BUFFALO BIRD WOMAN) (CA. 1839 - 1932) of the Hidatsa Indian Tribe - BUFFALO BIRD WOMAN’S GARDEN - as told to Gilbert Livingstone Wilson, Ph.D. (1868 - 1930)
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/
Under “BOOKS ONLINE” at the top, click on Titles
In the search box, type Buffalo Bird Woman’s Garden and hit Enter on your keyboard
Click on Buffalo Bird Woman’s Garden
Listening to Buffalo Bird Woman’s memories and teachings is as close as I can imagine to actually being among the Hidatsa so many years ago. I love this book for not trying to impose European stereotypes on Native Americans, but instead trying to record them as objectively and truthfully as they could - without bias and with respect.
In the same vein of respect without bias, Bodmer and Catlin painted the Hidatsa along with others along the Missouri River early in the 19th century and may be found in: http://www.artcyclopedia.com/
THAXTER, CELIA - AN ISLAND GARDEN
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/
Under “BOOKS ONLINE” at the top, click on Author
In the search box, type Thaxter, Celia and hit Enter on your keyboard
Click on “An Island Garden”
This is my absolute favorite flower garden book. Thaxter wrote it like a day to day journal, and the illustrations by the early 20th century American impressionist painter, Childe Hassam, take you right to her island of blue skies and ocean all around her poppies and hollyhocks.
More watercolors and oils by Hassam of her garden can be found through: http://www.artcyclopedia.com/ –
type Hassam where it says “Enter Artist’s Name” and hit enter
Scroll way down to where it says “Pictures from Image Archives”
Click on CGFA
On page 2 are 2 paintings from Celia’s garden:
Poppies, Isles of Shoals 1891
Isles of Shoals Garden 1892
(Summer Sunlight 1892 was also from her island)
On page 3 -
The Sonata 1893 (Celia’s parlor hosted writers of her day like John Greenleaf Whittier and many other prominent artists and musicians of her day - that piano got quite a workout. There’s a letter to Whittier from Thaxter in: http://www.public.coe.edu/~theller/soj/let2soj/thaxter.html )
The Room of Flowers 1894
Back to the main page of Hassam on Artcyclopedia, scroll to “Childe Hassam at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City” for the best rendition I could find of Hassam’s “Celia Thaxter’s Garden, Isles of Shoals, Maine”.
For the painting Hassam did of Celia in her garden, click on www.google.com , then type in: Hassam + “Celia Thaxter in her Garden” , then click on “Images”, then hit enter. The version that comes up that is 574 x 700 pixels - 156k will show up best on your screen
There are many more images of her garden, island and other places by Hassam that you might like to investigate. Hopefully, under the enchantment of Thaxter and Hassam, we will all spend more time in the parlor of DG’s Heirloom Forum.
WARNER, CHARLES DUDLEY, SUMMER IN A GARDEN (1870)
Warner was a pillar of rectitude and erudition, and some of his satirical remarks have a bite to them still worthy of the 21st century. But, his attitudes toward people of a gender, race or religion different from his are downright knuckle-dragging hairy Neanderthal. Take with several grains of salt.
Type Warner in the search box, hit enter; then type Warner in author search box again, hit enter.
Click on Warner, My Summer in a Garden, and hit enter.
Under “Formats available for download”, scroll down to the bottom choice where it says, “Plain text, us-ascii, zip, etc. and click on “Main Site” (if you’re not in US, go to “Mirror Site”).
Next, click on save (not open) and type in author’s last name first, then title and hit Save.
In the introduction, another Hudson School of Art painter is referred to: George Inness (1825 - 1894). His paintings can also be found through http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/inness_george.html . The best scans of images from Artcyclopedia are usually to be found under “Pictures from Image Archives.”
WILDER, LOUISE BEEBE - MY GARDEN
http://www.kellscraft.com/mygarden/mygardencontents.html
If ever anyone composed their garden like a tapestry, it was Louise Wilder. Another of her books, The Fragrant Garden, can still be found in paperback for under $10 - it remains a major classic of the genre.
Contemporary writers who carries on Ms. Beebe’s forte of 1) what to plant with what and 2) which kinds of flowers best celebrate the different seasons of the year are:
Stephen Lacey, author of The Startling Jungle - for that book, one critic called him the “Mozart of modern horticulture.” I don’t know of any other writer that can carry the reader into such a state of horticultural dreams as does Stephen Lacey
(unless it’s Henry Mitchell - if you haven’t read his books, run - do not walk - to your nearest library or bookstore).
Another book along these lines I can’t recommend highly enough is Passionate Gardening by Springer and Proctor - this one’s both compelling reading and a great reference book to refer to time and again.
NATURAL HISTORY BOOKS
BELT, THOMAS - THE NATURALIST IN NICARAGUA
http://promo.net/pg/
Type Belt in the author search box and type Nicaragua in Title Word(s) box, then hit enter; then repeat on next web page and hit enter.
Click on the title of this book that appears in a box on right of page.
On the next page, in the right column, under “Formats available for download”, scroll down to the bottom choice where it says, “Plain text, us-ascii, zip, etc. and click on “Main Site” (if you’re not in US, go to “Mirror Site”).
Next, click on save (not open) and type in author’s last name first, then title and hit Save.
You now have the book in a form usable as a “floating text” (see Gutenberg Press below), which you can “float” over related artwork as wallpaper:
Artists in the Hudson Bay School of Art did some gorgeous paintings of South America in the 19th century. Perhaps none of them are in Nicaragua, but they do make wonderful South American wallpaper for this ebook - from the Athenaeum (see below for website), go to F. E. Church and Martin Johnson Heade. Heade has got to be the epitome of hummingbird artists, and there are passages in this book on hummingbirds.
COOPER, SUSAN FENIMORE - RURAL HOURS (in 4 links)
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/
Click on “Author” and then type Susan Fenimore Cooper in the Search box.
Scroll down and click on the title “Rural Hours”
The Table of Contents for the book comes up next, so click on the chapters.
This is a journal written in 1887 somewhere in (I think) rural New York state. You could walk from your door to fields, woods and streams and enjoy the seasons as they passed through these places. In the evening, people centered around the fireside. This journal gives us an idea what bygone natural habitats and wildlife were like in New York state before being paved over with car lots and malls. It is written when life moved at a slower pace, and infused with the poetry of its time, which can be chased down through Online Books and Gutenberg Press as listed in the website guide in this article.
Many of the artists who belonged to the Hudson River School of Art painted places nearby or similar to where Susan Cooper lived, and can be found through Artcyclopedia and Google in the website source list in this article. Some of the best are: Albert Bierstadt, FE Church, Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, Sanford Gifford, Martin Johnson Heade, Inness, John Frederick Kensett, Alfred Jacob Miller and Thomas Moran. They painted not only in New England, but up and down the east and west coasts of North America, and around the Rocky Mountains and Yellowstone National Park. They did wonderful paintings of South America - this is where Heade did those incredible hummingbird paintings.
MUIR, JOHN
John Muir was a major force in the preservation of Yosemite, California as a national park (1864) and founded the Sierra Club. Thanks to him and other like-minded people, park protection meant protecting native ecosystems and all the life within them from about the second half of the 19th century up until the early 21st century. However, the 21st century has seen the interests of mining, real estate development, etc., given equal importance to native ecosystems within our park system, so John Muir’s fight is even more relevant today than it was then - modern mining and drilling technology destroys what it destroys much more efficiently and thoroughly than it did back in the 1800s.
The following website ( http://www.yosemite.ca.us/john_muir_writings/ ) has most of Muir’s major works, including shorter excerpts, quotes and articles for starters. He describes blooming alpine meadows, the waterfalls that plummet beneath them and the mountains that rise above them beautifully - as they were in Yosemite and the world connecting Yosemite to the North American midwest down to Cuba to South America and back again at that time. Records of native ecosystems (now lost or seriously diminished) as written by the likes of John Muir so long ago are often all we have now with which to guide us in creating gardens and parks that bring back those lost places to themselves.
In Yosemite (1912), flower lovers might enjoy Chapter VIII, “The Flowers.” It starts off, “Yosemite was all one glorious flower garden before plows and scythes and trampling, biting horses came to make its wide open spaces look like farmers’ pasture fields.” And then as you continue reading, you do feel as if you were right there with him, basking in the incredible bygone profusion of all those wild flowers in their California native setting.
There is something special you can do with books like John Muir’s on a computer. About 5 books on the foregoing website (plus 1 other) are also on: http://promo.net/pg/ . What makes the Gutenberg Press form of these books so great is that you can view the text in an easy-to-read small box about 2" x 4" (adjustable). The box will “float” over whatever image you set as wallpaper on your computer monitor screen.
If you’d like to try this style of reading John Muir’s book, The Yosemite, over changing scenes of Yosemite as painted by Albert Bierstadt or photographed by Ansel Adams or captured on a live cam on the Yosemite websight, go to the Website Sources section of this links guide and follow the directions under Gutenberg Press. After saving the book, you would then save some of the following images, and then right click on an image in your file to “set as background.” Thus, you can change the painting/photograph on your computer monitor as you read the text.
Images to accompany John Muir’s books can be found from Artcyclopedia and Google under Website Sources. Some of the painters of places John Muir wrote about belonged to the Hudson River School of Art which was based in New York, but whose artists ranged all over the globe. Some of these artists are as follows (mostly from http://www.the-athenaeum.org/ - encourages sharing of its art as long as you credit them as the source):
Hudson River School Paintings of the North American West:
Bierstadt_DeerGrazing_GrandTetons_Wyoming_1861
Bierstadt_IndianEncampment_LateAfternoon_1862
Bierstadt_AmongtheSierraNevadaMtnsCA
Bierstadt_StudyforGlacierValley_GlacierPointTrail_1873
Bierstadt_SunsetintheYosemiteValley_1869
HillThomas_GrandCanyn_Sierra_Yosemite_1871
HillThomas_SalmonFestvl_ColumbiaRvr_1888
Kensett, John Frederick (1816 - 1862)
StormWesternColorado_1870
MoranThomas_BadlandsoftheDakota_1901
MoranThomas_GrandCanyon_1908
MoranThomas_ShoshoneFallsontheSnakeRvr_Idaho_1900
(Moran would not recognize these falls now - they are modernized into a dam)
- - - - - - - - - -
PACKARD, WINTHROP - LITERARY PILGRIMAGES OF A NATURALIST
http://www.kellscraft.com/textcontents.html
Scroll down to the alphabet and click on P. Click on Winthrop Packard.
Click on “Edit” at the top of your tool bar, then click on “Find”, type in “Packard” and hit enter.
Keep clicking on “Find Next” until you come to Packard’s book, Literary Pilgrimages of a Naturalist.
Packard visited the homes of such gardeners, naturalists, poets and other authors as Thoreau, Wordsworth, Emerson, Hawthorne, Thaxter, and Whittier, etc. The photo taken from Thaxter’s island, looking out through a rocky chasm to the ocean was painted by Childe Hassam, who knew Monet. The two artists often painted this type of scene, and it tells you a lot about the artist’s eye when you see a photo of one of his subjects.
THOREAU, HENRY D. - WALDEN
http://www.kellscraft.com/Walden/Waldencontentpage.html
C. S. Lewis may have needed the device of a looking glass for a portal from one world to another, but for Thoreau, any event could be a looking glass like Lewis’ - just differently presented reflections.
Thoreau, Henry D. - Civil Disobedience
Walden
Walking
A Week on the Concord and the Merrimack
Wild Apples
and others
http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/t#a54
The above 5 books by Thoreau (and others) can be clicked on directly and saved per a note under Project Gutenberg in the Website source section in this article.
Civil Disobedience was required reading when I was in high school, and I hope, if you haven’t read it before, that you will now.
The others are all classics of natural history, and the best way to understand them is to get out into a woods or field or edge of pond, whether by walking, bicycling, wheelchairing, car, etc. DH and I have done it on crutches. Park systems now make some areas especially accessible to physically challenged people. And let Thoreau’s sense of wonder take you over. And then start our own journal.
Another Thoreau website: http://eserver.org/thoreau/
Another website of many of Thoreau’s books and essays, as well as essays on why he matters; intellectual exchanges and influences with contemporary thinkers such as Emerson, Robert Louis Stevenson, John Burroughs; a lesson on how to write your own journal a la Thoreau; etc.
BIOLOGY
BEES
MAETERLINCK, MAURICE - THE LIFE OF THE BEE
http://www.kellscraft.com/lifeofbeecontent.html
In Chapter 1, I scanned through the Victorian prose of this one up to Section 6, where the author gets down to the business of bees. Here, he begins, “The first time that we open a hive...” and soon this reader felt as if Vincent Price in one of his wonderfully ghastly horror flicks was doing the narration. This book is great fun, sort of a cross between a naturalist and Edgar Poe.
VIRGIL, THE GEORGICS 29BC
http://promo.net/pg/
Type Virgil in the search box, hit enter; then type Virgil in author search box again, hit enter.
Click on Virgil, The Georgics and hit enter.
Under “Formats available for download”, scroll down to the bottom choice where it says, “Plain text, us-ascii, zip, etc. and click on “Main Site” (if you’re not in US, go to “Mirror Site”).
Next, click on save (not open) and type in author’s last name first, then title and hit Save.
There’s much practical advice in here for gardeners and farmers expressed poetically, and it’s fascinating to read Virgil’s experience with bees in his words written thousands of years ago. The text can be read selectively by using the find/search feature in the Edit button in the tool bar at the top of the text. This way, for example, you can go directly to sections on bees.
As you read this text, you will encounter quite a few allusions to mythological beings, so the following website makes a good companion to this book:
Encyclopedia Mythica - http://www.pantheon.org/ For Virgil, click on “Roman Mythology” towards the top of the left column. On the following page, there’s a search box at top right of page. As an example for how to use this companion on mythology with Virgil’s Georgics, note the first sentence: “What makes the cornfield (they had no corn then - translator probably used the word “corn” to refer to grain) smile; beneath what star...it is meet to turn the sod (plow) or marry elm with vine (train grape vines on a support of either stake or tree)...or what proof of patient trial serves for thrifty bees...” The next sentence alludes to Liba and Ceres. He’s doing what the Farmer’s Almanac ( http://www.almanac.com/ ) does all the time: he’s inquiring into which agricultural practice goes best with which constellation of stars (although the Farmer’s Almanac does not imbue stars with gods and goddesses as did the culture of Virgil’s time). Well, prose that carries several layers of meaning intricately bound together is more fun to me than a bald fact. I would just read a few sections through at first without being analytical - listen to the sound of his words as if they were music then come back later and start digging.
http://mainebee.com/
Posted by Puddlegum, 4/3/03 in a thread started by Linnea on 4/3/03 called Any Beekeepers Out There? in the Garden Talk Forum (The link for this no longer comes up). This is an especially rich source of bee information.
http://www.umt.edu/biology/bees/trivia.htm
Very cute - I think Horseshoe posted this one. If you click on “home” and then on “kids”, you’ll find a wonderful website for kids.
http://www.wuvie.net/bees.htm
Takes a while to download, may need to repeatedly refresh. Scroll down to Bee Links. “Bee Basics by Dr. Richard Iacobucci” is a great pictorial introduction.
FROGS AND TOADS
Frogs as Bio-Indicators’ Science Corner - http://cgee.hamline.edu/frogs/science/index.html
Great for children or anyone concerned about our changing environment.
WEBSITE SOURCES:
Artcyclopedia: http://www.artcyclopedia.com/
This website and the google site below, are great search engines to find open domain paintings to go with your open domain books - especially for gardening, natural history, literature and so forth. For some of the books mentioned in this links list, I have mentioned artists that go especially well the text.
Athenaeum: http://www.the-athenaeum.org/ - This website requires registration and encourages sharing of its images on the condition that you credit it as the image’s source)
Bartleby: http://www.bartleby.com/eliot/index3.html
There are libraries within libraries on this site. I like Bartleby because of the way indexes and tables of contents are displayed - these give me an idea of what to look for, and then I just trot over to The Gutenberg Press and download which book I want so that I can 1) use the Search/Find feature under “Edit” in the tool bar at the top of the page and 2) float that little box of text over a related painting - see Gutenberg in this article about that. I often keep a text or reference by Bartleby open on the computer monitor while I cruise around in the unbroken text of the same thing from Gutenberg.
I hope you investigate the tabs at the top:
When you click on the Reference tab, you will see encyclopedias with copyrights after 2000; dictionary, thesaurus, texts on grammar, “language, style and composition”; the Bible, Shakespeare, Robert’s Rules of Order, and so much more.
Click on the Verse tab, and you’ll find another array of books that would require an infinity of linear board feet of bookshelf space to store - no dusting! A gardener could happily cope with Cabin Fever during winter with many a poem in here - try Robert Frost’s Mountain Interval for starters. In the Search bar, a cool thing to do here is to click on one of the references in the left search box (for example, “All Verse”), and then put a word - say “frost” - in the left box for which you’d like to find relevant poetry.
Google: www.google.com
When looking for open domain paintings, etc., try searching with the Image option as well as with the Web option.
There’s a great poem for winter I couldn’t find in Bartleby or Gutenberg, so if you haven’t tried googling yet, try this for starters: In google’s search bar, type “Frost at Midnight.” When google’s results come up, note all the different sources for this poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge that would also be great places to look for poetry. Anyhoo, some evening when you think you can’t wait another instant for the first snowdrop, a hopefully a poem like this will clothe your angst in a form more tolerable to the imagination.
Kellscraft: http://www.kellscraft.com/textcontents.html
novels, history, poetry, natural history, gardening, japanese culture, boston history, etc.
Online Books Page: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/
PagebyPageBooks: http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/
Project Gutenberg: http://promo.net/pg/
I. Following are directions on how to save a book to float over images on your computer screen while you read:
A. After clicking on http://promo.net/pg/ , type in the author’s name in the author box and hit enter.
Then, type in the author’s name in the author’s box again when the next webpage comes up and hit enter.
Next, the author and his books will come up. Click on the book you want.
Next, save the book (it’s better to save than to open right away, because then you can right click on the saved file and do a virus scan before opening it).
– A box will appear that says “Formats Available for Download.”
– Choose the format toward the bottom that includes: plain text; zip; main site (If you are outside the US, you may need to click around in the mirror site).
– Click on the “Main Site” that you previously chose and save it with the author’s name and book’s title to a file already titled something like, “My eBooks.”
B. While you read the book in this form, you can right click on any image and then left-click “Set as Desktop Background” to change the “wallpaper” on your computer screen to whatever image you want.
II. For those with visual or learning disorders, many of the books can be downloaded in a MP3 form to listen to.
An example of a Gutenberg Press sound file is a favorite work of mine for Christmas by Thomas Hardy titled “Under the Greenwood Tree” about a group of village musicians who tromp around their village by starlight singing Christmas carols.
III. Once you’ve saved, done a virus scan and then opened a book from Gutenberg Press, another nifty feature is the ability to search for a word or phrase throughout the document by going to your tool bar, clicking on Edit, scrolling down and clicking on “Find and Replace”, then typing in a key word you’re looking for and then hitting “Find Next.”
IV. Books come in many different languages on this website as well as almost any conceivable topic.
V. Sheet music primarily for stringed instruments is available here too. See below for more comprehensive source list/description of free online sheet music.
- - - - - -
GOLD MINES
I don’t have time to explore every possibility of a digital classic that I’m aware of, so am posting a few “gold mines” that look like they probably contain quite a few gems, for anyone that would like to help compile a DG digital library of books related to gardening, agriculture, natural history, etc.
Some of these require following links, and others may refer to an author or title that you could search for through Project Gutenberg or The Online Books Page listed in Website sources in this article.
Some gold mines worth mining are:
http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/540202/
http://www.henriettesherbal.com/
http://www.soilandhealth.org/
http://www.jimandellen.org/ellen/emhome.htm - Austen, Trollope and other pillars of English literature - some never published before - presentation and commentary makes unusually compelling for Victorian prose
MISCELLANEOUS EXCERPTS AND ESSAYS ON GARDENING /NATURE
http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/collections/naturalhist.html
A biography of Liberty Hyde Bailey, author of Hortus Third, from Cornell U. It includes the following quote by L. H. Bailey, “We should try to find the meanings rather than to be satisfied only with the spectacles.”
http://w3.goodnews.net/~kkrugh/books/rose_books_online.htm
(This one is mostly excerpts from books on roses, and has botanical drawings by Graham Stuart Thomas.
http://www.bayweekly.com/year99/issue7_9/lead7_9.html
Journal entries from a Naturalist/Artist at the Chesapeake Bay
http://www.lerc.educ.ubc.ca/fac/sbutler/LifeLinks.htm
Some of these essays and poems are written by gardeners as part of lifewriting courses at Brock House. Thought you might like them.
http://www.rc.umd.edu/rchs/reader/index.html
For the essence of a season, find winter in Coleridge below and spring in D. Wordsworth below.
Scroll down to and click on: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Frost at Midnight”
Dorothy Wordsworth: from the Grasmere Journal
MUSIC (what's a garden without music?)
Here are some websites that make free, online sheet music available. There’s all kinds of styles of music on all kinds of instruments for all kinds of ease/difficulty for free on the internet. Incidentally, most search engines did not cooperate with my search for free sheet music. The one that did was: http://www.pennysaverwired.com/index.cfm .
The websites for free sheet music are (My favorites are asterisked):
http://www.ad6uy.com/free2.html
http://www.freesheetmusic.net/Classical.html
http://www.pianopassion.com/ *
Click “Guide”;
scroll down and click on “Music Library of Denis Bouriakov” *, which won’t come up on my ‘puter right now, but if you can get this one, it’s a good one.
Scroll down to “Free Sheet Music Library”*
http://www.sheetmusicarchive.net/ *
http://icking-music-archive.org/#sheet_music *
http://www.bh2000.net/score/ *
Duets and chamber music - The sheet music would not come up on my computer under 4-hand music, under Schubert beginning with 4 Polonaises D.599. I did get the 4-hand Brahms Hungarian Dances.
http://www.free-scores.com/
Scroll down to “Partitions gratuities” and click on its menu and choose your instrument. I used to like to click on violoncelle, because there’s some great chamber music here. Go to page 121 and click on Viktor Goncharenko *.
http://hometown.aol.com/violinofgary/violin.html
This is a mirror site for the preceding Viktor Goncharenko.
http://ibiblio.org/mutopia/index.html *
This one has many kinds of instruments for different levels of difficulty, but, like the Werner Icking site above, there’s lots of easy music for recorder. For someone starting out late in life or who has physical problems with other instruments, the recorder is a great instrument to learn, and these two websites are full of a variety of easy music with recorders.
Also, on this website are the following two links:
The Choral Public Domain Library - my ‘puter can’t call this one up.
http://www.gutenberg.org/music/
This Gutenberg website was started in the early 1970's by one individual with the vision of making available free, online texts of classics, history, fairy tales, science, gardening, philosophy, murder mysteries, poetry, natural history (such as Thoreau), you name it. Eventually, this site branched off into sheet music, which seems mainly for wind and string instrument chamber music.
guitar:
http://www.geocities.com/jubing/free_music.html *
There are others - some charging a small annual fee. Let me know if you want those, too. I’m less familiar with them, and midnight is looming.
Thanks Elaine, I discovered this stuff by accident shortly after acquiring a computer a couple of years ago - had no idea the places the internet could take you, either.
great stuuf, thanks! & i didn't know this new forum was here either!
tf
Bless you for posting these links. Amazing! I never would have guessed such was available. Thanks ~Blooms
Me either! Thanks so much spiral.
You're welcome - it's the least I could do for Violabird and Larkie making me laugh so hard over vacuuming dinner 'mongst the 4 o'clock bushes for their chickens. Japanese beetles were so bad last year, I'll bet they could have fattened the chickens up enough to intimidate King Kong - LOL
bluespiral,
Thank you for the time you invested in posting all the links; very much appreciated. I'm going to have fun with this big time!
Erynne
Whew! Don't know where I want to begin. . LOL. Thanks loads, what a treasure trove. jc
You're welcome - have much to thank Daves Garden for, so am glad you liked it. Am expanding it to make it more useful to homeschoolers and anyone interested in personal continuing education. Will post revision - soon - I hope.
I owe a lot to the examples set by Darius, Horseshoe, Gardenwife, Ron_convolvulaceae, EmmaGrace, Louisa, Leaflady, tcfromky and so many others I can't think of right now - not to mention Dave and Trish for creating such a wonderful place as DG.
Blue, I'm gonna blame you for not getting anything done!
Sure do love DG, but this Fragant forum is the spice of my life!
What a treasure you are, bluespiral! You've done a tremendous job and I much obliged!!!
John
Glad y'all liked it - still hope to continue developing this, but am a tad side-tracked right now. Am also envisioning a Children's Corner.
Erynne and jcangemi, nice ta meetcha!
Blooms, remember that safari with tweezers in a suburban Veldt you suggested during our quest for the Blue Moonflower? Are you the leader of that expedition to the Dead Lawn Society? Seems like there's no end to odysseys on DG, is there? (I'll bet Homer is on Project Gutenberg)
Tamara, hope your wrist is healing and that you return to DG soon.
Imway, WOOHOO! You're back :-) You were sooo missed on DG - Mooning over this summer's hummers just wouldn't have been the same without you.
101 - hee hee - aw shucks - pawing thawed garden path - I am not the treasure here - it's buried in these books and waiting to green up in the spring and lurking in all our hearts masquerading as not-treasure.
Bluespiral
Just wanted you to know that I'm currently reading the following thanks to your wonderful information.
The Prince and the Pauper
by Mark Twain
The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots by Sutton and Sons
-Project Gutenberg
I never knew these existed until you posted. Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge. :)
Hugs&blessings ... Elaine
Some once said that all roads lead to Rome, but these days, it seems like quite a few keeping leading back to DG.
In the beginning, Gardenwife posted the links for free books at Online Books and Project Gutenberg on DG.
And then another day on DG, the daily quote was from Twain, and Shoe was fooling around with that quote on a moonflower thread (with a few other DG foolers-arounders) and it must have been laughing so hard that jarred a few of my brain cells to go looking for Twain ... well that chase led to this.
So, if anyone appreciates these lists, ya gotta include Gardenwife and Shoe and Dave and Trish and Darius and Julie88 and so many others, because without them and DG, the possibility and the motivation to do this would never have happened. Shucks, I'd probably be living in a dust-mootless home right about now, instead.
Gardenwife, Shoe, Dave, Trish, Darius, Julie88 and company, to play upon 101's remark to me about this thread elsewhere in the Books and Media Forum, my DH hates you! ROFL
ART HISTORY
This is just a beginning and will expand more on this in the future. My thinking here is to take each flower through as many different periods of art history as possible, and by contrasting different periods in history around the globe and different artistic styles on each flower, that in the process we will gain new insights into the species Homo sapiens - with flowers as the gateway. I am not educated in any of these areas, so you will discover along with me as I peruse these possibilities.
For a free, on-line, self-guided course on art history, you can begin by looking up any period of art history (or just go by the dates) referred to in the following paintings, woodcuts, water colors, sculpture, etc. in:
http://witcombe.sbc.edu/ARTHLinks4.html
Well, as the previous guide to gardening related to more than gardening, so this guide to art history will relate to more than art history. It's just that for me, personally, these are fun jumping-off points from which to pursue my curiosity in related subjects. Soooo, here's a companion link to the above link for music throughout several centuries:
http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=w
For music history, click on the music tab at the top, then there's a box just below those tabs to the left titled "Music".
Most of us have access to public libraries where you can check out CDs representative of all these different historical periods of history, and it can give your day quite a different dimension. History was my worst subject, and I remain hugely ignorant. But following these guides to art and music history in small, occasional bites has made the subject not only less painful - but actually interesting.
One more website that is organized by historical periods in which you can listen to the music of a period while perusing the paintings of that period is:
http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/r/rosso/index.html
In this website, the landscapes in the background of some of the Renaissance paintings say so much about how different it was then - not to mention being a fascinating resource for those interested in garden history. Since the church was the political institution in power during those times, most Renaissance art is oriented to the Christian faith, and many of these paintings give a very beautiful dimension to Christmas. I hope I'm not making academics laugh too hard - but the purpose of this thread is to have fun while perhaps learning something that takes us outside of our box.
Will start with the poppy for now -
POPPIES
A Gallery of Poppies
from Japan’s Edo period (1603 - 1867) -
UtamaroKitagawa_PctrBkSelctedInsectsVol1and2_hotei_org1788_ed1823a
http://hotei-japanese-prints.com/prints/B05-016.html
from a Dutch master:
HuysumJanvan_b1682_1749_Flowers_cgfa_1722
http://cgfa.sunsite.dk/h/h-14.htm#huysum - 3rd image under Huysum
from a French realist:
Fantin_Latour_b1836_1904_Poppies_1883
(on the website, this one could be called Flowers and not Poppies, so try to find this image both ways: either “Flowers, 1883" or “Poppies, 1883"
http://www.the-athenaeum.org/
You have to register on this site. Click on website and register. Then go over to “View Content” in right column, and beneath that click on “View artworks”. There will be an alphabet at top of page, so click on “F”. Use the Edit button in your toolbar to find Fantin_Latour. A page of many of his flower paintings, including this one, should appear.
from an American impressionist:
HassamChilde_b1859 - 1935_Poppies_IslesofShoals_cgfa_1891
Directions to this one are in the 3rd post titled Garden Books, and then under Thaxter in: http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/566811/
from a Scotch Art Nouveau designer:
MacKintoshCharlesRennie_b1868 _ 1928_InFairyland
and
MacKintoshCharlesRennie_HarvestMoon
Click on www.artcyclopedia.com . Then type Charles Rennie MacKintosh in the search box and click on the Artist by Name box next to it. Then scroll down to Pictures from Image Archives and click on Ciudad de la Pintura. I rely on the other sites in English from artcyclopedia to learn about MacKintosh, but this sight has great scans, so never mind what language it's in and just click on the images if you want to save them, and to “turn the page”, go to the bottom and click on the box in the lower right corner that says “Verlos 15 siguientes”.
Charles Rennie MacKintosh was an enormously popular and successful designer of buildings, furniture, textiles, etc. who was one of the definitive artists of his genre. However, eventually fashion passed him by, and in his down-time, he reluctantly did flowers which I most adore. (Fantin-Latour also grumbled about having to do flowers.)
I can’t find the source of the image of In Fairyland that I downloaded from the internet with smokey-gray hues of lavenders and pinks that is so wonderfully suggestive of the strain of Papaver rhoeas ‘Mother of Pearl’. The one on this website has been filtered through yellow-green-brown colors, but still, it’s fascinating to me how the Art Nouveau style transforms the poppy.
“Harvest Moon”, gives a unique impression of what could be poppy seeds (among other seeds) by the light of the moon. If you haven’t prowled in your garden among the seed pods in moonlight, you’ve missed a major part of the circle of life.
OkeefeGeorgia_OrientalPoppies_rasiel_1958
from: http://www.rasiel.com/
Rasiel has some of the best scans on the web, but its scans of Georgia O’Keefe have to be accessed through www.artcyclopedia.com , because the Artists Rights Society has asked that many artists be taken off this site. So, after clicking on this artcyclopedia link, type O’Keeffe in the search box and click on the Artist by Name box next to it. Then scroll down to Pictures from Image Archives and click on Artcyclopedia Masterscan feature: Oriental Poppies. On the next webpage, a black box will come up with an image of O’Keeffe’s oriental poppies in the upper right hand corner. I just click on that image, and rasiel’s scans, including this one, come up.
One thing that makes Georgia O’Keeffe so special to me is her treatment of flowers as if they were landscapes in themselves - up close, a flower has mountains and prairies and rivers of awesome proportions just like a Nasa photo of planet earth. One more great website to access from artcyclopedia is Ellen’s Place, which is further down the page under Other Web Sites and goes into O’Keeffe’s life and art in more detail.
This message was edited Feb 8, 2006 9:11 AM
Have added 3 links to the February 7, 2006 12:15 am post that are in themselves free, on-line courses about art and music history. So, as I develop that post about "flowers", you can look up whatever period of art and/or music history within which each image falls.
There are so many directions from which to approach the study of history. I would really appreciate anyone's input or contributions here - has anyone used the internet to search for free, online music falling in some of these historical periods as I have for free, open-domain, on-line art?
Does anyone have any links to share regarding the study of history?
I LOVE all these links. A great collection and thanks for posting them on DG. I don't know where to start reading and listening!!
I wish I had links to share, too, but nothing too original (for right now). I'm going to look around though and see what I can find. In the meantime I'll add this thread to my Garden Journal.
Thanks again (and again). t.
bluespiral it is fabulous. I may not get anything else done today.
Pauline
Tabasco and Pauline, you two aren't helping me get anything done today, either - LOL.
Tabasco just jogged a few of my brain cells on another post that finally - after 3 years of wondering - helped me to figure out how to "follow someone around" on DG.
And now this journal business. The vacuum cleaner is going to win this round on this rainy day, but what a novel experience for someone like me to "collect my thoughts" - LOL.
Thank you.
this is a wonderful wealth of information.. just found it. thank you so much, blue spiral. was just reading the John Muir story on Yosemite (plan to go there soon) Elaine
Elaine, if you go, could you post some pics? share tales? Would love to hear about your visit. Maybe you could start a thread just for that and dmail us who are on this one when you do.
funny, just the other day i was teaching my son about John Muir, just some basics, but then he has come up once on TV and once here since then.
how interesting! yes, please do share Elaine. or, if that is too much trouble, just take us with you LOL
tf
Oh,,, now I would love to post some pictures.. I take lots.. I just took many yesterday of all the butterflies on my azaleas.. I have never seen so many butterflies.. (of course their babies will be munching on those azalea leaves...) oh well.... tf, pack up and come on along. Elaine
hey, we are already packed. we keep two big suitcases in the back of the van for fire evacuations. just honk as you come up the drive ;-)
I'll bring the mule train
cool dogs!
oh wow, i wanta go too. I want to go somewhere on a road trip so bad. mwwah - so I'll lurk along too, okay?
hop on!
I'll bring my tent, sleeping bag, and cookstove.
that's how I travel, with camp gear and a camera. LOL
and cocoa for the evening gathering
i'll bring the marshmallows. minis for the cocoa, big'uns for the campfire