Book news update!

Not Just Dirt: How Soil Supports Our Planet, my latest nonfiction title in the Footprints series from Orca Book Publishers, is ever so closely nearing its publication date on September 16th! I’ve received an advanced reading copy and it is BEAUTIFUL! I am really proud of this one and looking forward to seeing it in bookstores and schools.

Janet Melrose (@calgaryscottagegardener) and I continue our longstanding writing partnership and we are delighted and honoured to be producing two more titles for TouchWood Editions (@touchwooded). Decking the Halls: Festive Plants to Celebrate the Holiday Season will be out and about on November 11th – check out that absolutely lovely cover, below! (Artist Jazmin Welch @fleckcreative is AMAZING!). And…we are currently in the editing process for Gardening for Indoor Growing, which will be published on April 1st of next year.

I am also working on another title for Orca Book Publisher’s Footprints series, but that project is still in its earliest stages and under wraps. The book won’t be published until 2027. I’ll hopefully be able to post about it very soon!

A few more bookish notes:

I recently had the pleasure of serving on a three-person panel for the Alberta Motor Association’s lunch and learn session to celebrate Pollinator Week. You can catch Make an Environmental Impact in Your Own Backyard here. (And if you want to “adopt” a bumblebee from AMA, the funds raised will go toward the creation of the Ma Matow Sakow Healing Forest through the AMA Community Foundation. The link is here.)

And…back in April, my first foray with Orca Book Publishers, Save Our Seeds: Protecting Plants for the Future, was named an Honor Book in The Nature Generation Green Earth Book Awards in the category of Young Adult Nonfiction! A huge thank you to my incredible publisher for allowing me the opportunity to write this book – and of course to The Nature Generation for supporting Earth-friendly and conservation topics in children’s nonfiction (and beyond!). I am thrilled!

Outside of the books:

In May, my husband and I took a drive out to Coaldale to tour the absolutely incredible Alberta Birds of Prey Centre. We had booked a couple of special bird encounters on top of our general admission, which gained us exclusive access to some behind-the-scenes extras that we will remember forever. One of them was to interact with and hold the magnificent golden eagle Sarah, seen here on my arm. This beauty is 42 years old – can you believe it? We also held a Northern saw-whet owl, a burrowing owl, a barn owl, a great horned owl, and a kestrel – and we fed a six-week-old baby great horned owl that sort of looked like the inside of a duvet with monstrous taloned feet and a beak that never stopped moving. Adorable! We also spent hours touring the site and enjoying all of the other birds in the aviaries and in the ponds, plus there was a spectacular flying demonstration with a bald eagle named Grace. A massive thank you to the staff at the centre and especially to Colin and Cheyenne for making our excursion so special!

Also in May, my husband and I (and Smudge, who carefully supervised with great interest) raised eleven painted lady butterflies from caterpillar to release. Whether or not you have kids, you should do this at some point in your life – it hopefully spins the gears about how insects live and behave, and how we can protect them. Just make sure the species you are raising is not invasive.

One little recipe to round out this month’s newsletter:

If you still have some chive blossoms kicking around, there are plenty of ways to use them in cooking. Here’s one: make a finishing salt by drying torn fresh chive blossoms, the zest of one organic lemon, and coarse sea salt. Dry the mixture really well. (When you think it might be dry, dry it some more.) Store it in a glass canning jar with a good lid and sprinkle it on everything you can think of. (Well, the things that make sense for you to salt, that is…).

🌸