I'm a middle school science teacher and I love being back in school! I enjoy organic gardening, making pottery, cooking (homegrown organic vegetables in pots that I made), canning/preserving, running, and reading. I live in Savannah - zone 8b - which means that I'll still have tomatoes coming in in November. It also means that I can grow some pretty strange flowers. I've been growing vegetables for a while, but I'm just starting to get interested in flower gardening. I'm beginning to develop some flower gardens (sun and shade) at my new home, and I'm a sucker for trying new things - so if anyone's got some good suggestions of flowers to try, let me know!

I got to Flickr through Ketzel Levine's Talking Plants blog on npr.org, so I thought I could recommend some good garden/nature-oriented books to fellow plant-o-philes...any recommendations you have for me are welcomed! Michael Pollan's Botany of Desire is an absolute must-read. He explains the history of four different plants while trying to decipher the relationship between plants and humans. My description doesn't make the book sound all that good, but trust me, it's a fabulous read. While not as much about the history of plants, I also recommend his book The Omnivore's Dilemma. I'm a fan of southern writer Janisse Ray. Her two books, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood and Wildcard Quilt are both great - they tell excellent stories while also providing an ecological history of southern Georigia. Another good book that mixes historical and ecological information with a fantastic story is The Golden Spruce by John Vaillant. Of course, Rodale's Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening sits by my side of the bed for nightly reference and I'm a huge fan of The Ball Blue Book of Preserving. I also can spend hours pouring through seed catalogs, dogearing the pages :)