Books:
Title: The Resilient Gardener
Author: Carol Deppe
Year Published: 2010
Rating: 3 1/2 stars
Ages: Adult Non-Fiction Gardening Book
Format: read eBook on Kindle for Droid

The Resilient Gardener is a in-depth how to guide on growing enough food to survive on during difficult conditions.  Since Carol Deppe lives in Oregon, near Portland, her focus is on growing food in that area.  Though I live on the east coast and am a total beginner gardener, The Resilient Gardener was a good big-picture look into what's possible in gardening during hard times.  Deppe chooses five main crops that she can survive off of: squash, beans, potatoes, corn, and ducks.  She has a gluten-sensitivity so that's part of why she chooses these crops, but she goes through the other reasons too.  The crops make up a balanced diet, are fairly easy to grow, grow well in her area, etc.  Her book gives an overview of basic gardening tips, how to garden if you don't own land, how to save seeds, how to breed hardier plants, how to prevent devastating die offs in your garden, how to harvest and store the food, and even how to cook each of these crops.  It's a good in-depth explanation of everything gardening has to offer.

Music:
Lana Del Rey, Born to Die [2012] (4 stars)
Apparently there's a bit of a dust up on the Internet over Lana Del Rey.  I haven't been interested enough in it to read why and know almost nothing about Lana Del Rey.  I do like her album though. It's full of lush, sultry verses about lost women and girls who seem to survive by being the girlfriends of difficult men.  There's an old-fashioned feel to her songs, mixed with a modern rhythm, and a lovely dream-like quality.

The women in Del Rey's songs remind me of the many women who seemed to be trapped in emotionally abusive relationships during the 50s and 60s, when women weren't allowed to make a living for themselves.  I have no idea if this is Lana Del Rey's intent or not, but in a time where Republicans are trying to force women back to this indentured state, it's interesting to listen to songs about the hard life of women who are dependent on men.  The songs aren't so much about these women as they are song by the woman.  She is treated as a person in her own right with her own logical feelings, but the sadness of her circumstances still comes through in the haunting dream-like verses.