Boston Flora

Category: Author Book Signing

  • Monday, October 20, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – America’s Founding Fruit: The Cranberry in a New Environment

    The cranberry, Vaccinium macrocarpa, is one of only three cultivated fruits native to North America. The story of this perennial vine began as the glaciers retreated about fifteen thousand years ago. Through the centuries the cranberry has provided critical sustenance for humans, on land, at sea, and in times of war. It was even offered in a diplomatic gesture to King Charles II in 1677. Today, it is a powerful tool in the fight against various forms of cancer. Author Susan Playfair interviewed scientists studying the health benefits of cranberries, growers in several states, geneticists mapping the cranberry genome, a plant biologist who provided her with the first regression analysis of cranberry flowering times, and a migrant beekeeper to weave together the history and culture of the cranberry and assess the possible effects of climate change on this North American resource. America’s Founding Fruit will be available for purchase and signing after this October 20 lecture at the Arnold Arboretum beginning at 7 pm in the Hunnewell Building. Fee $5 Arboretum members, $10 nonmembers. Register online at https://my.arboretum.harvard.edu/Info.aspx?EventID=1.

  • Saturday, October 25, 2:00 pm – Remembering North America’s Extinct Birds

    Join the Harvard Museum of Natural History at 2 pm on Saturday, October 25 for a screening of The Lost Bird Project, a film that honors five extinct North American birds: the Labrador Duck, the Great Auk, the Heath Hen, the Carolina Parakeet, and the Passenger Pigeon. Directed by Deborah Dickson, the film follows sculptor Todd McGrain as he sets out to create large bronze memorials to these lost birds and to install them in the locations where they were last seen in the wild. A discussion with McGrain and Andy Stern, the executive producer of the film, will follow the screening. A book about the project will also be available for purchase at the museum store. Free with museum admission.
    Haller Hall, enter at 26 Oxford Street. Free event parking available at the 52 Oxford Street Garage.

  • Wednesday, October 8, 6:30 pm – Kale, Glorious Kale

    With the guidance of bestselling cookbook author Cathy Walthers and the stunning photography of Alison Shaw, every home cook can explore the multitude of ways this most healthy of foods can be made into delectable and satisfying meals. From Baked Eggs Over Kale in the morning to kale snacks and appetizers, salads, soups, side dishes and main courses like Pork Braised with Kale and Cider for dinner, Kale, Glorious Kale will be your complete guide to the greatest of green vegetables.

    Catherine Walthers is an award-winning journalist and food writer. She has worked for the past 15 years as a private chef and cooking instructor in the Boston area and on Martha’s Vineyard. She is food editor of Martha’s Vineyard Magazine, and the author of Raising the Salad Bar, as well as co-author of Greens, Glorious Greens.

    This event takes place at Kickstand Cafe, 594 Massachusetts Avenue in Arlington. Porter Square Books in Cambridge is  delighted to partner with Kickstand, cousin to Cafe Zing here in the store. Watch for more PSB at the ‘Stand events in 2015!

  • Sunday, October 5, 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm – Handmade for the Garden

    Author Susan Guagliumi will highlight ways to enhance your outdoor space with DIY tools, pots, embellishments and more, using easy-to-find, inexpensive and repurposed materials. Gardeners of all skill levels will discover artful ways to beautify and personalize their gardens with handmade objects. Guagliumi’s book, Handmade for the Garden, will be available for purchase at this Tower Hill Botanic Garden event, to be held Sunday, October 5 from 1 – 2. Cost: Included with Admission. Free for members. For information call 508-869-6111. (Note: this program was postponed from August due to weather.)

  • Weekends, September 20 – October 13 – Tower Hill’s Bountiful Harvest Season

    Weekends, September 20 – October 13 – Tower Hill’s Bountiful Harvest Season

    Harvest season is approaching and that means Tower Hill Botanic Garden, 11 French Drive in Boylston, will be buzzing with four weekends of family activities celebrating summer’s bounty of plants, arts, and food.

    The special programming begins Sept. 20 and 21 with an appreciation of fall foliage and flowers. Activities will include fall crafts, an apple heirloom apple tasting tour, and a show and sale of stunning begonias and gesneriad flowers, such as the African violet.

    Local foods and flavors are the focus on the weekend of Sept. 27 and 28 with food and farm vendors on site both days, along with a display of vegetables grown at Tower Hill. On Saturday a youth garden workout, fall crafts, and apple tasting tour are all free with admission. Sunday features a garden tour as well as a wild edibles talk and walk.

    Oct. 4 and 5 is Artisan Weekend at Tower Hill with vendors selling handmade creations all weekend. Saturday’s highlights include an apple tasting tour, wreath making, a chamber group featuring baroque favorites, and the opening of internationally renowned designers Patch NYC’s latest show. On Sunday, join in with Russell Powell, author of Apples of New England, for a free talk and apple tasting, listen in with Susan Guagliumi, author of Handmade for the Garden, for creative do-it-yourself techniques, or sign up for a workshop to learn how to make a “Mountain High Apple Pie.”

    Tower Hill’s harvest weekend finale is Oct. 11 through 13. Activities include making leaf rubbings on a story walk, participating in a gardening book swap, creating fall crafts, joining a hay ride, sampling apples on a tasting tour, and learning about wild plants in the not-so-wild garden. Backyard chicken expert Terry Golson will host story time with her book Tillie Lays an Egg and Mass Audubon will conduct a Birds of Prey program.

    Harvest season means enjoying autumn views of Tower Hill’s 132-acre landscape and Mt. Wachusett, exploring the sustainable – and exquisitely designed – vegetable garden before it yields to winter, and discovering Tower Hill’s rare collection of heirloom apples, including 238 trees and 119 pre-20th century varieties.

    For more information on events presented by the nonprofit Tower Hill Botanical Garden at 11 French Drive in Boylston, Mass., please call 508-869-6111, visit towerhillbg.org, or email rburgess@towerhillbg.org.

    Home of the Worcester County Horticultural Society, Tower Hill Botanic Garden is less than an hour’s drive from Boston, Providence, Springfield, and Hartford and is nationally recognized as one of the finest gardens in the Northeast with more than 80,000 annual visitors and 6,000 active members.

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  • Tuesday, September 30, 7:00 pm – The Book of Barely Imagined Beings

    From medieval bestiaries to Borges’s Book of Imaginary Beings, we’ve long been enchanted by extraordinary animals, be they terrifying three-headed dogs or asps impervious to a snake charmer’s song. But bestiaries are more than just zany zoology—they are artful attempts to convey broader beliefs about human beings and the natural order. Today, we no longer fear sea monsters or banshees. But from the infamous honey badger to the giant squid, animals continue to captivate us with the things they can do and the things they cannot, what we know about them and what we don’t.

    With The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, Caspar Henderson offers readers a fascinating, beautifully produced modern-day menagerie. But whereas medieval bestiaries were often based on folklore and myth, the creatures that abound in Henderson’s book—from the axolotl to the zebrafish—are, with one exception, very much with us, albeit sometimes in depleted numbers. The Book of Barely Imagined Beings transports readers to a world of real creatures that seem as if they should be made up—that are somehow more astonishing than anything we might have imagined. The yeti crab, for example, uses its furry claws to farm the bacteria on which it feeds. The waterbear, meanwhile, is among nature’s “extreme survivors,” able to withstand a week unprotected in outer space. These and other strange and surprising species invite readers to reflect on what we value—or fail to value—and what we might change.

    Caspar Henderson is a writer and journalist whose work has appeared in the Financial Times, the Independent, and New Scientist. He lives in Oxford, UK. He will appear at Porter Square Books, 25 White Street in Cambridge, on Tuesday, September 30 at 7 pm. For more information visit www.portersquarebooks.com.

  • Tuesday, September 30, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Preserving Forests in New England – Insights from Japan and Europe

    The biological diversity of New England’s deciduous forests is threatened by habitat fragmentation, increasing homogeneity of the vegetation, and the loss of top predators. Most of the natural landscape is now dominated by medium-aged woodlands, leaving relatively little space for species that require open habitats, young forest, or old-growth forest. The future of deciduous forests also will depend on climate change and the introduction of insects and pathogens that decimate particular species of trees. Understanding the history and ecology of these forests is critical for sustaining their productivity and preventing the loss of biological diversity. Professor Robert Askins of Connecticut College will present a talk on Tuesday, September 30, from 7 – 8:30 in the Hunnewell Building at the Arnold Arboretum on the major threats to our local forests and new insights for their protection from studies of remarkably similar forests in East Asia and Europe. His recently published book, Saving the World’s Deciduous Forests, will be available for purchase and signing.  Fee $5 member, $10 nonmember.  Register on line at https://my.arboretum.harvard.edu/Info.aspx?EventID=1.

  • Wednesday, August 27, 7:00 pm – Boston Beer: A History of Brewing in the Hub

    Porter Square Books, 25 White Street in Cambridge, will host Norman Miller, author of Boston Beer: A History of Brewing in the Hub, on Wednesday, August 27, beginning at 7 pm. Free, but please rsvp at www.portersquarebooks.com. 

    Since before Patriots like Paul Revere and Sam Adams fermented a revolution in smoky Beantown taverns, beer has been integral to the history of Boston. The city issued its first brewing license in 1630, and breweries like Haffenreffer Brewery and American Brewing Company quickly sprung up. This heady history took a turn for the worse when the American Temperance Movement championed prohibition, nearly wiping out all of the local breweries. In 1984, the amber liquid was revitalized as Jim Koch introduced Samuel Adams craft brews to the Hub and the nation. Shortly after, Harpoon Brewery emerged and became the largest brewery to make all its beers in New England. From the planning of the Boston Tea Party over a pint at Green Dragon Tavern to the renaissance of the burgeoning craft brewing scene, join author and “Beer Nut” Norman Miller as he savors the sudsy history of brewing in the Hub.

    Norman Miller grew up in the birthplace of Johnny Appleseed and plastic pink lawn flamingos: Leominster, Massachusetts. Despite being a late bloomer as a beer drinker, he has been writing the Beer Nut column for the MetroWest Daily News in Framingham, Massachusetts, and the GateHouse Media family of newspapers since 2006, as well as a blog of the same name.

    Currently, Norman lives in his childhood home in Leominster with his dog Foxy, his cats Trouble and Tweak and his prized possession, Beatrice the beer fridge, which is always stocked up with Boston beers.

  • Tuesday, August 12, 7:00 pm – Off the Leash: A Year at the Dog Park

    Porter Square Books at 25 White Street in Cambridge will host author Matthew Gilbert on Tuesday, August 12 beginning at 7 pm. Off the Leash is about the strange, wonderful, neurotic, and eccentric dog people who gather daily at Amory Park, overlooking Boston. And it’s about Matthew Gilbert’s transformation from dedicated homebody to joyful member of the dog park club: an oddball group of dog people with fur on their jackets and biscuits in their pockets. Gilbert, the TV critic at the Boston Globe, describes his reluctant journey into the park subculture, as the first-time dog owner of a yellow lab named Toby. Like so many Americans right now, he has been steeped in the virtual, digital world. At the park, though, amid the chaotic energy of dogs and people gathered in packs, he is unprotected by the screen and forced to let go. The dogs go off-leash, and so do the people.

    There is something eternal and deeply satisfying about both the group experience at the park and the simple pleasure of playing fetch with one’s canine companion in a large, green, open space. A charmingly written narrative that will appeal to anyone who has ever enjoyed watching a puppy scamper through a park, Off the Leash is a paean to dog lovers and their pets everywhere. (But especially the ones in the Boston area.)  Free, but sign up at www.portersquarebooks.com or by calling 617-491-2220.

  • Wednesday, July 9, 7:00 pm – Coffee for Roses: And 70 Other Misleading Myths about Backyard Gardening

    Gardening questions? Get them answered at an evening of plant Q&A at the Porter Square Bookstore, 25 White Street, Cambridge, on Wednesday, July 9 beginning at 7 pm.

    Word-of-mouth may be a great way to learn about some products, but word-of-mouth gardening tips can be a very bad idea. The age-old practice of passing along gardening tips and tricks is no guarantee you will get a good result…it might even do the opposite. In her new book, garden expert C. L. Fornari looks at 71 common garden practices and uncovers the truth behind the lore. Do marigolds keep the bugs out of the veggie patch? Will rusty nails turn hydrangeas blue? With humor and affection, she goes back in time to sort out the good, the bad and the just plain silly…and tells us why. Coffee for Roses combines gardening history and expert advice into one useful, time- and money-saving package. The author’s award-winning full color photography is throughout.

    C.L. Fornari is a writer, speaker, and gardening expert from Cape Cod. She is a past Garden Club of the Back Bay speaker as well.