3 Free eBooks – July 2017

My picks for this month are about gardens…and all published between 1912 and 1914.

Rusinol, Santiago. Jardines de Espana. Madrid: Renacimiento. 1914. Available from Hathi Trust here. There is a timeless quality to gardens. Do we enjoy them in the same way today – when we aren’t distracted by the modern world? The depictions of Spanish gardens of 1914 would fit into modern notions of pleasant outdoor places as much as they did a century ago. I particularly liked the limited color illustrations.

Villiers-Stuart, C.M. Gardens of the Great Mughals. London: A. and C. Black, 1913. Available from Hathi Trust here. Lush and full of architectural elements like pools, fountains, and canals…I wished the scanning had been higher quality for the illustrations.

Thomas, H.H. The Garden at Home. London: Cassell and Company. 1912. Available from Hathi Trust here. Less formal gardens – with beds blooming profusely and roses on trellises. Is this the type garden we still strive for around our homes?

3 Free eBooks – June 2017

Two of my three picks for June are from Princeton online sources – which were new to me:

Gordon, R.K. and Thoreau MacDonald. A Canadian Child’s ABC. Toronto & Vancouver: Dent. 1931. Available from alphabet books for English 385 Spring 2016 here. I liked the art work. Some of the images might be dated…but some still seem representative of Canada.

Ando, Hiroshige. Gojūsantsugi. Edo: Muraichi, 1852. Available from the Princeton University Digital Library here. The book was owned by Albert Einstein and includes an ink wash caricature of him on the endpapers drawn by Okamoto Ippell in 1922.

Loddiges, Conrad, & Sons with plates by George Cooke. The Botanical Cabinet. London: John & Arthur Arch. 1818-1833. Twenty volumes from Hathi Trust here. I can’t resist botanical prints and these volumes have lots of them. Nearing the end of June, I still have half of them to enjoy in July! I like the magnolia blooms that are beginning to brown and evidently the engraver of this volume did as well.

3 Free eBooks – May 2017

I am enjoying the Hathi Trust collection of books authored by Robert Sweet – a botanist, horticulturist, and ornithologist that published in the early 1800s. They are all beautifully illustrated….and I like the botanical prints and bird depictions in books from the 1800s.

The British Flower Garden has drawings by Edwin Dalton Smith. London: W. Simpkin and R. Marshall. There are 7 volumes available from Hathi Trust: 3 in the first series and 4 in the second published between 1823 and 1838.

The ornamental flower garden and shrubbery was a work selected from selected from Sweet’s work and that of David Don and published by London: G. Willis in 1982. It is listed as volume 1 on Hathi Trust so there could be other volumes that are just not available yet online.

Cage and chamber-birds; their natural history, habits, food, diseases, management, and modes of capture listed Johann Matthaus Bechstein as the author, HG Adams as the editor and Sweet as the source for all information on warblers more than a half century after his death. London: G. Bell and Sons. 1892. The book is available online here. I was surprised that so many of the birds were consider viable cage birds during that time.

Cistinae. The natural order of cistus, or rock-rose was published by London: J. Ridgway, 1930 and is available on Hathi Trust here. Sweet is listed as the sole author on this one.

Geraniaceae : the natural order of gerania was published by London: J. Ridgway, 1930 and 5 volumes are available from Hathi Trust here. During that time period there were a lot of varieties of ‘geraniums’ that were developed and cultivated. I’ve only gotten through the 1^st volume so far….still have the other 4 to savor!

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 13, 2017

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Sounding Off on Noise – I’ve been thinking a lot more about noise since I started driving an electric vehicle. I notice and enjoy the quiet of the vehicle even though the noise from the well-maintained gasoline powered cars was something I accepted as ‘white noise’ for all the years of my life up to 2017. I would rather hear natural noises (birds singing, wind in the trees) that noise from a highway or airplanes overhead.

Albatrosses counted from space – Even nests inaccessible to humans (on the Chatham Islands off New Zealand) can be seen in satellite images from the WorldView-3 satellite. The numbers of nesting pairs were lower than expected. Several more years of observations will be needed to determine if it is just a poor year or the numbers of birds are indeed declining.

The Nature of Americans: A national initiative to understand and connect Americans and Nature – There is a lot on this site. I started browsing with the Major Findings and then Recommendations. It is well organized and intended to be actionable.

Foods that Lower Cholesterol – No surprises…but the review is good.

Guggenheim Museum Releases over 200 Modern Art Books Online for Free – I am enjoying browsing this collection on the Internet Archive.

Saber-Tooth Cats, Dire Wolves Found in La Brea Tar Pits Show Wounds from Ice Age Battles – Based on analysis of just under 2,000 bones that revealed signs of trauma sustained in combat….events of lives etched in bone.

2-ingredient no-sugar date caramel sauce – Yum! I made this in my small Ninja – very easy and yummy. I’ve used it as a dip for apple slices and spread on toast. A great treat and counts as a fruit and calcium.

Moose hair and birch bark – Taking a close look at an artifact that will go into the Native American Voices gallery at the Penn Museum later this month – after a bit of treatment in The Artifact Lab.

A first-ever find in Egypt: 4,000-year-old funerary garden at tomb entrance – Before now, this type of garden was only known from illustrations on tomb walls.

The secrets of the Coke and Mentos Fountain – A fun experiment….and chemistry lesson.

3 Free eBooks – March 2017

It was challenging to pick 3 ebooks this month since I enjoyed so many.

Holme, Charles (editor). The Old Water Colour Society: 1804-1904. London: Offices of “The Studio.” 1905. Available from Hathi Trust here. In the time before color photography --- water colors were a popular way to capture scenes of life. I liked this one of children outdoors…fishing.

Horwood, A. R. A new British flora: British wild flowers in their natural haunts. London: Gresham. 1919. Six volumes available from multiple sources via Hathi Trust here. When I see books like this, I wonder how many of these plants still survive as wild flowers. A lot has changed in the almost 100 years since this books was written. Still – I always enjoy the botanical drawings and recognize some of the plants.

Pyne, W.H. The History of the Royal Residences of Windsor Castle, St. Jamesʼs Palace, Carlton House, Kensington Palace, Hampton Court, Buckingham House, and Frogmore. 1819. Three volumes available from Internet Archive: volume 1, volume 2, Volume 3. Note publication the date. The illustrations in these volumes show what the rooms were liked about 200 years ago! The picture I’ve clipped to demonstrate the type of illustration is from Carlton House.

3 Free eBooks – February 2017

Peter Rabbit --- Big Cats --- National Botanic Garden: quite diverse eBook picks for this month.

Potter, Beatrix. Peter Rabbit. Frederick Warne & Co. 1902. Available from Internet Archive here (click on the author link to get all the other Beatrix Potter books available from the Internet Archive). I am reading and enjoying the illustrations of all Potter’s books that have been digitized this month. Peter Rabbit is probably the most memorable story from my childhood. I can remember giggling at one phrase in particular: “…and jumped into a can. It would have been a beautiful thing to hide in, if it had not had so much water in it.”

Fallen, Anne-Catherine; Shimizu, Holly H.; Solit, Karen; Allen, William C. A Botanic Garden for the Nation: The United States Botanic Garden. Washington, DC: US Botanic Garden. 2007. Available from Hathi Trust here. I was please to find this book online (published only 10 year ago) about one of my favorite places in Washington DC. I’ve posted about it many times (here). We didn’t make the trek in December this year…but maybe we should in the next few weeks. The conservatories are a warm place to tour in the winter!

Turner, Alan; Anton, Mauricio (illustrator). The Big Cats and their Fossil Relatives. New York: Columbia University Press. 1997. Available from Internet Archive here. Another more recent book – published only 20 years ago. There are more different kinds of cats with long canines in Earth’s past than I realized.

3 free eBooks – January 2017

Furnishings – butterflies – tiles….3 interesting topics that seem to be my themes for eBooks this month.

Tracy, Berry B. (curator). 19^th Century America Furniture and Other Decorative Arts. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1970. Available from Internet Archive here. The objects were included in an exhibit in 1970 – with this book recording it all. I found the ‘other decorative arts’ even better than the furniture.

Weed, Clarence Moores. Butterflies. New York: Doubleday, Page & Company for Nelson Doubleday, Inc. 1927. Available from Hathi Trust here. I liked the vivid colors of the illustrations. Butterflies are generally colorful but the backgrounds were just a vivid in this book. Do you recognize the Tiger Swallowtail?

Campbell Brick and Tile Co. Designs for encaustic and geometrical tile pavements, also of encaustic, glazed, majolic̀a, and other tiles for hearths, fireplaces. Leicester: J. Fleming & Co. 1877. Available from Hathi Trust here. I like decorative tile…great ideas of Zentangles and (maybe) a renovation project for my house!