On an enchanting evening that promises wonder, a gardener’s dream quickly transforms into a chilling nightmare: his cherished flowers are under siege, battling for survival against ravenous pests. Who can shield them from the clutches of these relentless adversaries? In a race against time, Superman and Lilly embark on a quest to find the only creatures capable of rescuing the garden. The question remains: Where have the ladybirds vanished? Can they be located before it’s too late?

"A kusudama is a traditional Japanese sphere formed by modular origami construction techniques. This guide presents instructions for more than forty elaborate kusudama that range in shape from stars to flowers to pinwheels. Suitable for intermediate-level and experienced folders of all ages"--

In 1837, while charting the Amazonian country of Guiana for Great Britain, German naturalist Robert Schomburgk discovered an astounding "vegetable wonder"--a huge water lily whose leaves were five or six feet across and whose flowers were dazzlingly white. In England, a horticultural nation with a mania for gardens and flowers, news of the discovery sparked a race to bring a live specimen back, and to bring it to bloom. In this extraordinary plant, named Victoria regia for the newly crowned queen, the flower-obsessed British had found their beau ideal. In The Flower of Empire, Tatiana Holway tells the story of this magnificent lily, revealing how it touched nearly every aspect of Victorian life, art, and culture. Holway's colorful narrative captures the sensation stirred by Victoria regia in England, particularly the intense race among prominent Britons to be the first to coax the flower to bloom. We meet the great botanists of the age, from the legendary Sir Joseph Banks, to Sir William Jackson Hooker, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, to the extravagant flower collector the Duke of Devonshire. Perhaps most important was the Duke's remarkable gardener, Joseph Paxton, who rose from garden boy to knight, and whose design of a series of ever-more astonishing glass-houses--one, the Big Stove, had a footprint the size of Grand Central Station--culminated in his design of the architectural wonder of the age, the Crystal Palace. Fittingly, Paxton based his design on a glass-house he had recently built to house Victoria regia. Indeed, the natural ribbing of the lily's leaf inspired the pattern of girders supporting the massive iron-and-glass building. From alligator-laden jungle ponds to the heights of Victorian society, The Flower of Empire unfolds the marvelous odyssey of this wonder of nature in a revealing work of cultural history.

In the early 1970s, the Oakland Athletics became only the second team in major-league baseball history to win three consecutive World Series championships. But as the decade came to a close, the A's were in free fall, having lost 108 games in 1979 while drawing just 307,000 fans. Free agency had decimated the A’s, and the team’s colorful owner, Charlie Finley, was looking for a buyer. First, though, he had to bring fans back to the Oakland Coliseum. Enter Billy Martin, the hometown boy from West Berkeley. In Billy Ball, sportswriter Dale Tafoya describes what, at the time, seemed like a match made in baseball heaven. The A’s needed a fiery leader to re-ignite interest in the team. Martin needed a job after his second stint as manager of the New York Yankees came to an abrupt end. Based largely on interviews with former players, team executives, and journalists, Billy Ball captures Martin’s homecoming to the Bay area in 1980, his immediate embrace by Oakland fans, and the A’s return to playoff baseball. Tafoya describes the reputation that had preceded Martin—one that he fully lived up to—as the brawling, hard-drinking baseball savant with a knack for turning bad teams around. In Oakland, his aggressive style of play came to be known as Billy Ball. A’s fans and the media loved it. But, in life and in baseball, all good things must come to an end. Tafoya chronicles Martin’s clash with the new A’s management and the siren song of the Yankees that lured the manager back to New York in 1983. Still, as the book makes clear, the magical turnaround of the A’s has never been forgotten in Oakland. Neither have Billy Martin and Billy Ball. During a time of economic uncertainty and waning baseball interest in Oakland, Billy Ball filled the stands, rejuvenated fans, and saved professional baseball in the city.

Fill your house with blooms with florist Rowan Blossom's debut book, Living with Flowers. This book will teach you the basics every budding florist should know, before showing how to create more than 25 of Rowan's favorite floral masterpieces for every occasion, from tokens to the grandest of statements. Learn how to make a floral chandelier or hang a curtain of flowers, fashion a festival crown, or tie a simple bouquet. Rowan's love of everything bohemian, vintage, and natural, and her no-nonsense approach, makes this the perfect book for first-time flower-arrangers and anyone who wants to bring flowers into their home.

In the 1930s Dr Edward Bach found that restoring emotional balance to his patients drove out ill-health and unhappiness. Bach Flower Remedies for Men shows how his 38 flower-and-plant-based remedies apply to the particular emotional problems of men, and how a system that heals the whole person can win freedom from the pressure to conform and perform. Topics covered include bullying, falling in love, sexuality, job-hunting, redundancy and fatherhood, and specific problems from acne and hair loss to heart disease and prostate trouble are described in a practical, non-technical way. Bach Flower Remedies for Men is written with men in mind. But it will prove invaluable to therapists, healers, lovers, wives, sisters, daughters and mothers - anyone, in fact, who has a man's welfare at heart.

The Flower Year is a flower coloring book celebrating of a year of of flowers, birds, butterflies and small creatures to color in, adding up to a year's worth of coloring enjoyment. The Flower Year is a hardcover book, with intricate illustrations by Leila Duly, a textile print designer. Duly's work is inspired by old Victorian etchings, unique vintage finds and the English countryside. Leila's first book was Floribunda: A Flower Coloring Book, published by Laurence King in 2016 followed by Floribunda, A Flower Coloring Journal and a calendar. "Beautiful, silken ivory pages in these smaller sized, hardback books. Laurence King Publishing produce top quality journals and this Journal, and Book, are right up there. As you'll see from the video, the Journal has a few blank pages between the drawings. The Flower Year has interesting quotes on the title page for each month and at the back is a pictorial index to the images that lists the plants in each drawing. You'll be referring to this a lot as you research your flowers and leaves. Pencils will be fine but make sure you test any water based pens on an inconspicuous page. The covers continue the soft pink covers that we associate with Leila." Prue, Colour + Blog "This is a very beautiful book filled from cover to cover with detailed images of delicate flowers. Every page is different, it never feels like you're coloring the same picture twice because there is so much variety. There are single page drawings, pages with a collection of single flowers along with their names and larger pictures that cover a double page. I particularly liked the index pages at the back of the book which gives you the names of all of the plants used in the pictures. I would definitely recommend, it's my new favorite." Amazon reviewer