Horticultural society makes donation for gardening books

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

The Meeker County Horticultural Society has given a generous donation to the four libraries in Meeker County to purchase new gardening books. These books have been arriving recently, ready to be checked out.  Members of the horticultural society assisted in choosing the books. 

At the Litchfield Library, the books are Butterfly Gardening with Native Plants: How to Attract and Identify Butterflies by Christopher Kline, The Downsized Veggie Garden: How to Garden Small WhereverYou Live, Whatever Your Space by Kate Copsey, Essential Pruning Techniques:Trees, Shrubs, and Conifers by George E. Brown, Grow Native: Bringing Natural Beauty to Your Garden by Lynn M. Steiner, The Mother Earth News Guide to Vegetable Gardening, Mycorrhizal Planet: How Symbiotic Fungi Work with Roots to Support Plant Health and Build Soil Fertility by Michael Phillips, The Perennial Matchmaker: Create Amazing Combinations with Your Favorite Perennials by Nancy J. Ondra, Raised Bed Revolution:  Build It, Fill It, Plant It… Garden Anywhere by Tara Nolan, RHS Companion to Wildlife Gardening by Chris Baines, Rock Gardening: Reimagining a Classic Style by Joseph Tychonievich, Victory Gardens for Bees: A DIY Guide to Saving the Bees by Lori Weidenhammer, and The Well-Tended Perennial Garden: The Essential Guide to Planting and Pruning Techniques by Tracy Disabato-Aust.

New to the Dassel Library collection are 100 Plants to Feed the Bees: Provide a Healthy Habitat to Help Pollinators Thrive by the Xerces Society, and Teeny Tiny Gardening: 35 Step-by-Step Projects and Inspirational Ideas for Gardening in Tiny Spaces by Emma Hardy. 

The additions to the Grove City Library are Drought-Resistant Planting: Lessons from Beth Chatto’s Gravel Garden by Beth Chatto, and Homegrown Pantry: A Gardener’s Guide to Selecting the Best Varieties & Planting the Perfect Amounts for What You Want to Eat Year-Round by Barbara Pleasant. 

The titles added to the Cosmos Library collection are The Children’s Garden: Loads of Things to Make & Grow by Matthew Appleby, and Glorious Shade: Dazzling Plants, Design Ideas, and Proven Techniques for Your Shady Garden by Jenny Rose Carey.

These new books can be found on the libraries’ shelves of new arrivals.  All of these books are also available to be ordered by anyone in the library system, to be picked up at your nearest library.  Many other gardening books are available on the shelves in our local libraries, some donated in the past by the horticultural society. 

Thank you to the Meeker County Horticultural Society for making so many beautiful and practical books available to the gardeners in our area!

With a little help from our Friends

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

I would like to thank the Friends of the Litchfield Public Library for their donations to the library this past year.  They gave generous donations that were used to buy many books for our adult collection and to build a quality children’s DVD collection to replace the VHS tapes that needed to go.  They also helped to fund our children’s programming throughout the year, including the summer reading program, preschool storyhour, and children’s book clubs.

Our Friends members have been working hard throughout the year to make the monthly book sale better than ever.  New people have taken on leadership roles in the group, making it possible for it to go on being a great source of support for our local library.   If you’re interested in getting involved in this wonderful group of supporters, come to our January meeting on the 21^st at 7 p.m. in the library meeting room.

One of the things I was able to do with the book funding from the Friends was to buy some of the books that appeared on the lists of the best books of the year.  Here are a few examples:

The Luminaries is the novel that won the Man Booker Prize this year.  The award is given to the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the U.K., the Commonwealth, or the Republic of Ireland.  Author Eleanor Catton, who is not yet thirty, was born in Canada, raised in New Zealand, and earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.  “The Luminaries” is a historical mystery about a man seeking his fortune in the goldfields of New Zealand in 1866, who is drawn into a series of unsolved crimes.  Despite its length, readers say they can’t put it down.

Author Jesmyn Ward won the National Book Award in 2011 for her novel Salvage the Bones.  Her new memoir, Men We Reaped, was named one of the best books of 2013 by Publishers Weekly and others.  Ward examines Southern rural poverty and racism after losing her brother and four other young men in her life to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the problems that black men in poverty face.  The title is from a Harriet Tubman quotation: “When we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped.”

The Panopticon made Library Journal’s, NPR’s, and Amazon’s lists of the best of the year.  This gritty debut novel by Jenni Fagan seems to be hard to categorize as either dystopian or realistic.  Some have compared the 15-year-old main character Anais to Lisbeth Salander and Oliver Twist, and Fagan’s writing to Margaret Atwood and Albert Camus.  Anais has spent nearly all of her life in the foster care system and isn’t sure if she beat a police officer into a coma, because she was on drugs at the time.  At the Panopticon facility, she befriends other kids who’ve fallen through the safety net, and she becomes convinced she’s being watched as part of a sinister experiment. 

Pilgrim’s Wilderness: A True Story of Faith and Madness on the Alaska Frontier is a stranger-than-fiction story of a modern-day homesteading family, listed among Amazon’s best books of the year.  Initially welcomed as a wholesome if eccentric addition to a small Alaska community in 2002, the 17-member family became controversial when “Papa Pilgrim” bulldozed his own road across national park lands.  Author Tom Kizzia investigated the story for the Anchorage Daily News and discovered that the father had a secret, strange past.  As people in the community took sides on whether Pilgrim should have the right to build the road, he became increasingly volatile and was revealed to be a sociopath.  The New York Times said, “Not since The Shining has family life off the grid seemed as terrifying.”

If these books or others on the lists of the best of the year interest you, take a look in our catalog or ask a library staff member to help you.  We will be happy to put a well-written book in your hands this winter.

Some of the best books of 2013 lists:

Library Journal

Publishers Weekly

Amazon

NPR (this one is interactive to help you find something you'd like)

Star Tribune

Library news: The book sale, a donation, a mini-museum, and St. Patrick's Day

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

Our library has a used book sale every month on the third Saturday.  I’ve been hearing that people don’t know that we have a sale, other than the one held during Watercade.  Some local residents are big fans of the sale; the crowd outside the door when we open on book sale Saturday sometimes looks like Black Friday.

People donate books, movies, and music to the library all year long, and we sometimes discard library books and other items that we no longer need in the library collection.  This all leads to quite a number of things to sell each month.  The Friends of the Litchfield Public Library organize the items for the sale, and the Women’s Study Club work as cashiers at the sale.  The proceeds benefit the Friends group, which in turn benefits the library. 

This month we have many health and fitness books available to help you with your Litchfield Lite goals.  We always offer a wide range of fiction and nonfiction books for adults and children, plus VHS movies and a few cassette audiobooks.  Sometimes you’ll find DVDs and CDs. 

In other library news, you may notice something new on the wall in the children’s department.  We have a beautiful new bulletin board, donated in memory of Sylvia Altmeyer.  Our first display is Dr. Seuss.  It’s been fun to see how the bright, lively bulletin board display has caused a sudden demand for our Dr. Seuss books!  We will put our summer reading displays on it and all kinds of children’s book promotions.  We’re so grateful for this lovely gift.

Another memorial donation the community has been enjoying is the display case near the library’s front desk.  Pam Dille loaned us her collection of pewter snowflake ornaments this past month, set up in a beautiful, northern lights-style display.  The Jericho Historical Society in Jericho, Vermont, issues one ornament each year, each one a reproduction of Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley’s historical photographs.  Bentley was a pioneer in the study of snow crystals.  He began photographing snowflakes with a camera and microscope in 1885, discovering that no two snowflakes were alike.  He captured over 5000 images in his lifetime.  The picture book Snowflake Bentley, about his life and work, won the Caldecott Medal in 1999.  

Do you have a unique collection you’d like to show to the community in our display case?  The case locks and has adjustable glass shelves.  If you think you’d like to share your collection for a month or so, stop in to look at the case and talk to me or Linda about whether it would work for the library.  Past displays have included antique and collectable buttons, custom-made toy soldiers from Germany, and a historical display on the origins of our library.  Think of it as a small museum display, and maybe you’ll think of something you’d like to showcase.

One final library news item for the week: Mark your calendars for Minnesota author Erin Hart’s visit to our library a month from now.  She will be here on Thursday, March 14, at 7:00 p.m.  Her husband Paddy O’Brien is an Irish musician who will perform Irish traditional music on accordion.  We’ll have a fun St. Patrick’s Day event just a few days before the holiday.  This is a Legacy-funded event and it is free for you to attend.