Life for most people is a stiff challenge. Seldom indeed are good jobs handed to one on a platter. You typically, train, study, and learn to pursue a path to perfection. When tackling the job of a Montana timber faller, I jumped in with both feet on the first day. This was truly a situation of live and learn as you go. I was blessed beyond belief to make it through each and every week. By keeping my nose to the grindstone and my eyes ever vigilant on my surroundings, I was able to survive countless encounters that were destined to cripple my career. In the end, I am still alive and smiling. Someone is surely watching over me.

No one ever said that life would be easy. Challenges will invariably confront anyone who dares to step out in faith, even those who believe that they can eventually solve the many mysteries of life. The author was confident enough to attempt many new work opportunities that presented themselves. Stepping out of ones comfort zone is typically a secret recipe for adventure, usually cloaked in success, especially when committed to using a bit of common sense. From logging to construction to wheat farming to cattle ranching to driving huge grain trucks to communication cable installations to avoiding rattlers to even walking in the presence of grizzlies and rams, the author was privileged to taste a touch of what life has to offer. He wasnt disappointed!

Bamboos are extraordinary in the ability to transform a garden, adapt to inhospitable surroundings, survive with little care and, most of all, surprise and delight the people who view them. Too long the exclusive pleasure of those with tropical and subtropical gardens, this hand-picked selection allows gardeners in cooler climes to experience the wonder and infinite variety of these magical plants.Besieged by winter wet, summer drought and bitter, drying winds, Paul Whittaker's garden has been a rigorous testing ground. In the first part of the book his compelling anecdotes, experiences and case histories illuminate how bamboos perform in different places, draw attention to their idiosyncratic nature, and highlight their geographical origins. A further section describes the bamboo's unique physical structure and growing habits. These fascinating insights give you the knowledge you need to choose the right bamboo for your site and grow it successfully.At the heart of the book are detailed plant descriptions that join with striking photographs and evocative illustrations to highlight each plant's characteristics. Culms available in all the colors of the rainbow may also be striped, grooved, wrinkled or knobbled. Leaves range from glaucous needles to huge plates of deep green with striking variegations. There are bamboos perfect for creating shady groves and hedges, and others that deserve stand-alone treatment as specimen plants. Here you will find everything from the elegant, willowy "Fargesia rufa to the bold, tropical looks of "Sasa palamata f. "nebulosa. Using bamboos to best effect in the garden, propagation, aftercare and their resilience to pests and diseases complete the guidancefor gardeners.The distillation of years of hands-on growing experience, this is the ultimate bamboo reference book for cool-climate gardeners. Enthusiasts will delight in the variety of new possibilities for their collection and gardeners everywhere will be captivated by the charm bamboos bring to countless different garden situations.

In the USA Today bestselling Ralph Compton series, sometimes a man has to leave his mark... Willis Lander was once the T-Bar ranch’s best bronc buster. Then came the day when a stallion as black as pitch and as mean as a rattler shattered his knee. Unable to perform the duties required of a cowboy, Willis took the only job he felt capable of handling—minding the line shack forty miles from the ranch—and secluded himself from the pity of his peers in the Wyoming wilderness. Now, the T-Bar is being sold, leaving Willis to wonder whether the new owner will want to keep a broken bronc buster on the payroll. Laurella Hendershot is a Texan rancher grateful for the opportunity to leave the Lone Star State behind and build a new life for herself. And she just may be Willis’ last chance… More Than Six Million Ralph Compton Books In Print!

New York Times Bestseller • Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize • An Oprah's Book Club Selection “Powerful . . . [Kingsolver] has with infinitely steady hands worked the prickly threads of religion, politics, race, sin and redemption into a thing of terrible beauty.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review The Poisonwood Bible, now celebrating its 25th anniversary, established Barbara Kingsolver as one of the most thoughtful and daring of modern writers. Taking its place alongside the classic works of postcolonial literature, it is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in Africa. The story is told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it—from garden seeds to Scripture—is calamitously transformed on African soil. The novel is set against one of the most dramatic political chronicles of the twentieth century: the Congo's fight for independence from Belgium, the murder of its first elected prime minister, the CIA coup to install his replacement, and the insidious progress of a world economic order that robs the fledgling African nation of its autonomy. Against this backdrop, Orleanna Price reconstructs the story of her evangelist husband's part in the Western assault on Africa, a tale indelibly darkened by her own losses and unanswerable questions about her own culpability. Also narrating the story, by turns, are her four daughters—the teenaged Rachel; adolescent twins Leah and Adah; and Ruth May, a prescient five-year-old. These sharply observant girls, who arrive in the Congo with racial preconceptions forged in 1950s Georgia, will be marked in surprisingly different ways by their father's intractable mission, and by Africa itself. Ultimately each must strike her own separate path to salvation. Their passionately intertwined stories become a compelling exploration of moral risk and personal responsibility.

An anecdotal lifestyle guide for fans of French and English culture shares tips for inexpensively enjoying everything from travel and fashion to gardening and dining, in a reference inspired by 16th-century exotic encyclopedias that includes coverage of such esoteric topics as the history of champagne and Julia Child's secret to a perfect omelet.

Finalist, Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing Finalist, Banff Mountain Book Competition Finalist, BC Book Prize Globe and Mail best books of 2018 CBC best Canadian non-fiction of 2018 In the tradition of John Vaillant’s modern classic The Golden Spruce comes a story of the unlikely survival of one of the largest and oldest trees in Canada. On a cool morning in the winter of 2011, a logger named Dennis Cronin was walking through a stand of old-growth forest near Port Renfrew on Vancouver Island. He came across a massive Douglas fir the height of a twenty-storey building. Instead of allowing the tree to be felled, he tied a ribbon around the trunk, bearing the words “Leave Tree.” The forest was cut but the tree was saved. The solitary Douglas fir, soon known as Big Lonely Doug, controversially became the symbol of environmental activists and their fight to protect the region’s dwindling old-growth forests. Originally featured as a long-form article in The Walrus that garnered a National Magazine Award (Silver), Big Lonely Doug weaves the ecology of old-growth forests, the legend of the West Coast’s big trees, the turbulence of the logging industry, the fight for preservation, the contention surrounding ecotourism, First Nations land and resource rights, and the fraught future of these ancient forests around the story of a logger who saved one of Canada's last great trees.