Creative Library Cards

Some libraries are taking their designs up a notch for special runs of library cards. The reasons behind these cards vary. They are used to celebrate their communities, bring attention to such things as most checked out book, honor special dates, or any number of other reasons. To find out more about limited edition library cards please visit this site: https://www.libraryjournal.com/story/get-em-while-theyre-hot-limited-edition-library-cards.
If you do an image search on Google there are even more cards to find out there.

Attention Anyone Who Likes Book Signings And/Or Wants Ideas For Their Yards

Are you curious about how your backyard could help your local wildlife, or how you could have a more carefree lawn that isn’t a flat, green expanse? Great! Doug Tallamy will be giving two talks towards the end of October addressing this subject. For more information on these events, please visit Mizzou Botanic Garden’s website at https://garden.missouri.edu/plan-your-visit. Please note that locations for the two events are not the same.

Homegrown National Park will take place on Thursday, Oct.24th. The promised book signing starts at 5:45 and the lecture at 6:30 at Monsanto Auditorium, MU Bond Life Sciences Center.

Saving Nature in Your Yard Takes place at Rock Quarry House at 9:00 a.m. on Oct. 25th.

Below are a list of books he has written, or had a hand in writing.

Nature’s Best Hope

Nature’s Best Hope (Kid Edition)

How Can I Help? Saving Nature With Your Yard (Release Date April 8, 2025 – Preorder Available)

Bringing Nature Home

If you want to look at any of these books on Amazon, please go here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Douglas-W.-Tallamy/author/B001JS3ELE?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Thank you to Tammy Green (Heart of Missouri Master Gardeners) for bringing these events to my attention as well.

Missouri Chestnut Roast Festival

Tammy Green (Heart of Missouri Master Gardeners) brought this one to my attention. I attended last year and had a great time. They have different things you can try and most of the plants I remember seeing there aren’t the type I find at Walmart. I have no idea what they will have this year, but especially if you want a tree, this is worth visiting. The staff were very informative and happy to answer questions. The event happens on Oct. 19th from 10:00-3:00 at the MU Horticulture and Agroforestry Research Farm. For more information you can visit their website at https://centerforagroforestry.org/event/missouri-chestnut-roast-festival-2/?cmplz-force-reload=1728567005415.

The MU Extension Center’s Garden Hour

This particular event was brought to my attention by Tammy Green who is affiliated with Heart of Missouri Master Gardeners.
Meeting frequency varies with the season and will be switching to monthly instead of weekly since fall is around the corner. According to Tammy, “it is a great opportunity to ask gardening questions and learn.” If you are interested in attending you can visit this website (https://ipm.missouri.edu/) for more information.
They also have a YouTube channel where you can watch the event live or past meetings. (www.youtube.com/c/MUIPM)

A Closer Look at Friendships in Books

Pick your favorite story and I’m guessing there’s at least one friendship, probably more. According to the article in the link further on, there are seven types of friendship. How many can you guess before reading the article (https://lithub.com/the-seven-kinds-of-friendships-you-find-in-literature-a-taxonomy/)? Do you have a favorite? Which characters among everything you have read form your favorite friendship?

One Map to Rule Them All

Unless someone knows of a map that does this for the entire world. If such a map exists, it should rule over all other maps.
Clearly, I have found a map that makes me happy. It shows locations for bookstores for most of the U.S. including Hawai’i and even a few in Canada. For about half of the states, there are so many bookstores you can only make an educated guess at which state you are looking at. Nice! You can find it here: https://www.iheartbookstores.com/
Here is an article that talks about the map: https://lithub.com/never-get-stranded-without-a-novel-again-with-this-map-of-6000-bookstores/. I recommend checking out their Literary Atlas of America as well. Happy exploring!

Scriptember

September is almost here and with it, the Scriptember challenge (https://kickinthecreatives.com/scriptember-lettering-challenge/). This has nothing to do with writing plays or prepping for NaNoWriMo. It’s about hand lettering. If you don’t know how to hand letter, then this is a perfect chance to try. 99designs has a good tutorial here: https://99designs.com/blog/design-tutorials/basics-of-hand-lettering-tutorial/#section2-1.
For this particular challenge, you need only a few basic art supplies (traditional or digital) and a good collection of your favorite quotes. It’s not a problem if you don’t already have a collection. You can go through any annotation notes you have or look through books of nothing but quotes. If you ask your friends for their favorite quotes, then maybe at the end of this challenge you could return their quote as a gift, or the front of a card, for them. There are also a slew of sites that have collections by themes.