A garden is a peaceful, beautiful sanctuary, but beneath its serene appearance is a seething hive of sex, violence, and treachery--among its flowers and insects, that is. Based on years of voyeuristic observation, Love in the Garden reveals intricate, humorous, and often horrifying intimate details about the frenzied sexual lives of garden flowers and insects. Written with a poetic fancy and with wit, and from a shamelessly anthropomorphic viewpoint, Love in the Garden delights in the ingenuity and variety of the sexual tactics of insects and flowers. The bee orchid, for instance, attracts male bees by duplicating the scent emitted by female bees during mating season. A gullible male arrives and searches excitedly for the non-existent female opening. Then, a second male arrives, mistakes the first male for a female, and, as they wrestle and wiggle furiously, the bee orchid is pollinated. In the realm of insects, sex is often accompanied with violence and in some cases, even cannibalism. Take the notorious female praying mantis: in the midst of the sexual act, she beheads her enraptured male partner, who carries on though headless, while she devours him bite by bite. Love in the Garden does not aim to enrich the scientific knowledge of its reader. Instead, it hopes to involve the reader, through sexuality and all forms of sensation, in the turbulence of life.

It all began when Simon Griffiths decided that he and his whippet couldn't live in his tiny but gorgeous one-up one-down shopfront in Albert Park any more. He had a yearning for open spaces, country air and, most importantly, a garden of his own. On finding his cottage in Meadowbank, and trialling different plants, he gradually became part of the secret gardening network. The one where cuttings are exchanged between friends and planting successes and failures are recounted over neighbourhood fences. Simon is a brilliant photographer, bringing warmth and joy to all his subjects, but he is also a very knowledgeable plantsman. In this book he has captured his favourite 20 country-style gardens and shares the knowledge he has gleaned from fellow garden lovers.

A Globe and Mail 100 Best Book Finalist, Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction Finalist, City of Victoria Butler Book Prize A deeply affecting portrait of a long partnership and a clear-eyed account of the impact of a serious illness, writing as consolation, and the enduring significance of poetry from one of Canada's most celebrated voices. When we ran off together in 1978, abandoning our marriages and leaving wreckage in our wake, I was a "promising writer," Patrick had just won the Governor General's Award. I was so happy for him, and I've continued to be every time an honour comes his way, but I knew if I didn't grow, if I remained merely someone who showed potential, we wouldn't last. I swore I wouldn't play the dutiful wife, cheerleader, and muse of the great male writer, and he didn't envision a partner like that. We aspired to flourish together and thrive in words and books and gardens. When Lorna Crozier and Patrick Lane met at a poetry workshop in 1976, they had no idea that they would go on to write more than forty books between them, balancing their careers with their devotion to each other, and to their beloved cats, for decades. Then, in January 2017, their life together changed unexpectedly when Patrick became seriously ill. Despite tests and the opinions of many specialists, doctors remained baffled. There was no diagnosis and no effective treatment plan. The illness devastated them both. During this time, Lorna turned to her writing as a way of making sense of her grief and for consolation. She revisited her poems, tracing her own path as a poet along with the evolution of her relationship with Patrick. The result is an intimate and intensely moving memoir about the difficulties and joys of creating a life with someone and the risks and immense rewards of partnership. At once a spirited account of the past and a poignant reckoning with the present, it is, above all, an extraordinary and unforgettable love story. Told with unflinching honesty and fierce tenderness, Through the Garden is a candid, clear-eyed portrait of a long partnership and an acknowledgement, a tribute, and a gift.

It’s 1977 and Cassie Lyman, a graduate student in women’s history, is struggling to find a topic for her doctoral dissertation. When she discovers a trove of drawings, suffrage cartoons, letters, and diaries at Smith College belonging to Kate Easton, founder of the Birth Control League of Massachusetts in 1916, she believes she has located her subject. Digging deeper into Kate’s life, Cassie learns that she and Kate are related—closely. Driven to understand why her family has never spoken of Kate, Cassie travels to Cape Ann to attend her sister’s shotgun wedding, where she questions her female relatives about Kate—only to find herself soon afterward in the same challenging situation Kate faced.

A detailed overview of the life and teachings of one of the great Ottoman Sufi masters, Mehmed Muhyiddin Uftade, is accompanied by an English translation of a collection of his religious poetry in this tribute to the Turkish and Persian spiritual traditions. Uftade's prominent role in the founding of the Jelvetiyye, one of the main dervish orders, his influence on Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent, and his instruction of renowned disciple 'Aziz Mahmud Hudayi, are carefully described alongside the faithfully rendered tenets of his spiritual teachings, augmented by firsthand accounts of his views translated from the journal of a disciple. Uftade's poetry employs simple, direct, and wonderfully human language to express the human yearning for the divine and the ups and downs of the spiritual path.

Epic love poems often share common thematic elements -love in union, love in separation, and love in reunion. This book investigates common threads and shared symbolism between the literary masterpieces The Story of Layla Majnun (written by Nizami in the Islamic Sufi tradition) and Gita Govinda (written by Jayadeva in the Hindu Bhaktic tradition). Book jacket.

Bringing together messages from vintage Kew postcards with new prose reflections, Love from Kew is a one-of-a-kind look at the enduring needs for human connection--with each other as much as the natural world. In 2020, the United Kingdom recognized the 150th anniversary of the official introduction of postcards. At the peak of their popularity in the early twentieth century, more than two million postcards a day were mailed in the UK. One could view postcards as the texts or tweets of their day: brief communiques that provide glimpses into the lives of others, with stories that are often as funny or poignant as they are cryptic. These messages were often sent to family or friends back home from a site of special importance--like, for example, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. ​Love from Kew is a valentine to these missives of the past, placing vintage Kew postcards--and the messages written on them--alongside new prose reflections from multi-genre writer Sophie Shillito. The decades-old correspondence and Shillito's wonderstruck contemporary reflections offer a meditation on how these Kew postcards speak to the eternal human need for both personal connection and communion with the natural world. In today's world of environmental precarity and increased isolation, these themes are just as relevant as they were when these antique postcards were first penned. Love from Kew is a fascinating and heartfelt blend of social and visual history, observed through the singular lens of Kew Gardens.

"The Garden of Love is an important subject in secular art of the fifteenth century, both in Italy and in northern Europe. The chief Italian examples were all painted in Tuscany in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. They depict a landscape consisting of a flowery meadow, a grove, and a great marble fountain, where lovers gather to sing, dance, and make love. Allied to the Garden of Love are variations on a horticultural theme--gardens for lovers celebrated in history, fountains of love, hunts set in a forest that conclude alongside a fountain. Sometimes, too, the Garden of Love becomes the setting for narratives and romances. In all these instances the Garden is more than a pleasing tapestry like backdrop: it serves as a visible symbol of the nature of love itself. This book illustrated with 97 excellent photographs, attempts to do two things ; to chart the history of the Garden of Love, and explain the significance it once had." -- Book jacket.