Holiday Shopping

Posted by Jamie McIntosh Dec 9, 2007

I stopped in the bookstore last night, hoping to accomplish a large chunk of my holiday shopping. As always, I gravitated toward the garden and landscaping book aisle. So many titles beckoned! What a different landscape we organic gardeners live in today, where dozens of wonderful books vie for our attention. Twenty years ago, people viewed organic gardening as something of an oddity; and we had to rely more on word-of-mouth advice and tips from other like-minded gardeners, supplemented by a few fine organic book and magazine titles that are still out there.

Although I had to forgo any additions to my organic gardening library this week, I did allow myself one treat to further my writing craft: a new thesaurus. Skipping straight to the entry in Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus that shares word choice alternatives for “organic,” I savored the choices these lexicographers used to describe our passion: “elemental, essential, fundamental, integral, necessary, and vital.” Yes, those words encapsulate the organic gardening philosophy and spirit quite nicely.