Flowery Prose goes ultra-brief this week (which honestly might not be a good idea in this weather). 

Now, that’s REALLY, REALLY old compost….

“The first written mention of compost in agriculture is found on Mesopotamian clay tablets dating from approximately 2300 BC.  Around 2,000 years later, the first book written in prose Latin came out:  Cato the Elder’s De Agricultura, a plainspoken how-to manual on successfully and economically setting up and maintaining a farm…Composting was an important though often unheralded practice that propped up more than a few of the great civilizations.  Cleopatra deified the earthroom, and mentions of composting appear in the Bhagarad Gita, the Talmud, and the Bible, as well in the writings of Shakespeare, Sir Francis Bacon, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington.”  – from Homegrown, by Marta Teegen (2010, Rodale, Inc., New York)

La Macchina Botanica is pretty durn cool.

Yeah, the weather outside is frightful – at least here on the Canadian Prairies, anyway.  Seriously, -40°C is always a shock, no matter how often you’ve been through it.  I’ve been contemplating knitting little scarves for my houseplants (which would work out nicely if I could actually knit)!  While I wait for the next Chinook, I can amuse myself by watching this video, which combines two of my very favourite things:  Rube Goldberg machines and gardening.  I hope you like it, too!