Into The Garden

Ah, spring! Time to get your hands dirty messing about in the garden. Or, just to read about gardens – no one’s judging!  Either way, we’ve got you covered. This month’s book display features books to inspire and advise in the actual hands-on garden (how about Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn, or Practical Botany for Gardeners); books about gardening (perhaps Envisioning the Garden: Line, Scale, Distance, Form, Color, and Meaning); city farms (Farm City: The Education of a City Farmer, or how about The Vertical Farm); and urban sustainability (Agriculture in Urban Planning, or The Art of Building a Garden City).

Or maybe you want to let your mind wander the garden without getting your hands dirty. We’ve got all kinds of options for you! Gardens literary (The Quest for Shakespeare’s Garden, maybe, or Garden Plots: Canadian Women Writers and Their Literary Gardens); historical (Working the Garden: American Writers and the Industrialization of Agriculture, or On Other Grounds: Landscape Gardening and Nationalism in Eighteenth Century England and France); and biographical (The Gardener of Versailles: My Life in the World’s Greatest Garden or Vita Sackville-West’s Garden Book).

And there’s fiction and poetry, too! – we could go on and on! So drop by to borrow a book and then head out into the garden to read it.

May has been the Heritage Month in recent years in North America. It celebrates the culture, traditions, and history of Asian Americans in the United States and Canada.

May is a time to reflect on the contributions that Canadians of Asian origin continue to make, to the growth and prosperity of Canada. Canadians are invited to take part in the events that honour the legacy of Canadians of Asian origin who, throughout Canadian history, have done so much to make Canada the culturally diverse, compassionate and prosperous nation we know today.

Asian Heritage Month has been celebrated across Canada since the 1990s. In December 2001, the Senate of Canada adopted a motion proposed by Senator Vivienne Poy to officially designate May as Asian Heritage Month in Canada. In May 2002, the Government of Canada signed an official declaration to designate May as Asian Heritage Month. (The above information is from the Government of Canada’s website.)

There is a Asian Heritage Month book display in the Redpath Library during the whole month of May this year. The display features books on Asia or by Asian authors. You’ll find books on various topics such as Asian cinema, sports, entertainments, history, literature, religion, as well as encyclopedia on Asian American history and culture. You can find books by well known Asian Canadians including Joy Kogawa, Canadian poet and novelist; Jen Sookfong Lee, a Chinese Canadian broadcaster and novelist; Vivienne Poy, historian, fashion designer, community volunteer, and senator (1998-2012).

Please take a look at these books, and check out one or two of them for your reading.