The Cottage Garden by Christopher Lloyd  & Richard Bird provides a good overview of traditional English cottage gardens, complete with illustrations, sample design types, and practical advice.  Christopher Lloyd was a favorite garden writer in Britain for most of the twentieth century, and in this book he distills much of what he likes about traditional cottage gardens as well as what he dislikes about more contemporary attempts at historical reconstruction of them.

He is particularly bothered by the usual absence of vegetable gardening in contemporary planned cottage gardens.  In the traditional cottage garden, there was almost always an almost rigidly ordered vegetable garden at the back of the house, while most contemporary reconstructions stick basically to flower and shrub collections.  I think this is important to highlight as well, since the cottagers who both created and relied on cottage gardens used them as an important contributor to their diets.  This is why it would not have been surprising to find bees, chickens, and pigs in a historic cottage garden.

This is a good book for an overview of the authentic English cottage garden style with a decent discussion of its roots along with practical tips on how to recreate that familiar scene of a tidy mess.

The essence of a cottage garden as it has come down to us through the ages is a bountiful yet regulated informality.  It has evolved through common sense, combines need with enjoyment and is entirely unpretentious.  The layout could be said to be formal, as the front path invariably leads straight from the gate to the door.  Vegetables, of course, are planted in neat rows, as are currant and gooseberry bushes, strawberries, and raspberry canes.  But the flowers are a happy jumble.

What’s with Republicans and backdrops? First it was the “green monster” standing behind McCain and now at this convention it’s “old man powder blue”. In my book, this powder blue fairly screams polyester suit.

I watched Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull last night with my family, and it was great.  There were the usual thrills and adventures this time around, but with more comic relief.  I also appreciated the tying up of loose ends, and the boatload of inside-references to the earlier movies.  One that I picked up on was when Indy was lecturing to his students and told them to open to “Michaelson chapters 3 and 4.”  In Raiders, he assigns “Michaelson chapters 1 and 2″ “for next time.”

If you’ve been waiting 19 years for this film, you owe it to yourself to see it.  It’s better than the Star Wars prequels.