“The Ornamental Edible Garden.” By Diana Anthony. University of Hawaii Press. $24.99.
“The Ornamental Edible Garden.” By Diana Anthony. University of Hawaii Press. $24.99.
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Paging through Diana Anthony’s how-to guide for growing an ornamental and edible garden leaves the reader hungry and ready to begin sowing and growing the varied plants featured in the book. Anthony provides plants from fruits to leafy greens, as well as leafy reds.
Anthony also provides detailed diagrams, shows how to design a backyard garden to maximize space and harvest, as well as with maximum aesthetic appeal. Symmetry in planting is one key for backyard garden balance, she says, and can be achieved by using plants that look the same at a distance, even if the produce is different.
Anthony describes common and less well-known food plants, offering tips on preferred varieties, as well as heirloom ones.
Tables in the book list vegetables by size, color and hardiness, as well as flowers by usefulness — which ones attract bees and butterflies, which repel pests and which attract them.
“The Ukulele: A History.” By Jim Tranquada and John King. University of Hawaii Press. $20.99.
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For fans of ukulele music, as well as history buffs who enjoy tracking the significance of an instrument through several eras, Jim Tranquanda and John King offer “The Ukulele: A History.”
“For modern audiences (and many journalists), the ukulele conjures up images of Tiny Tim warbling ‘The Good Ship Lollipop’ on Laugh-In, or George Formby singing ‘Leaning on a Lamposts,’ and there the story ends,” the authors write in the foreward. “There is a far more interesting — and meaningful — story to be told.”
That story focuses on how the ukulele “has functioned simultaneously on a number of different levels — musical, cultural, economic, and even political. As an instantly recognizable symbol of Hawaii, the ukulele has been many things over the past 130 years: a promise of an island paradise; a tool of political protest; an instrument central to a rich and celebrated musical cuture; a musical joke; a symbol of youthful rebellion; a highly sought-after collectible; a cheap airport souvenir; a lucrative industry; an early adapter to new technologies; and the product of a remarkable synthesis of Western and Pacific cultures.”
The extensively researched end result takes readers from the ukulele’s introduction to Hawaii in the late 19th century to its modern usage and pop culture appearances.
“You Can Play the Ukulele.” By George “Gippy” Cooke. Island Heritage. $7.95.
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Hawaii-born and raised George “Gippy” Cooke offers his ukulele-learning method in book form for beginners hoping to play the instrument in “You Can Play the Ukulele.” Cooke leads off with a few basic tips — what type of ukulele to use, and why — and a diagram to give even the least-experienced player a reference point for ukulele terms.
Chords come next, with photographs to illustrate the proper technique. Then Cooke gets to the music, with songs from “Aloha Oe” to “Mele Kalikimaka.”
“Tales of Tutu Nene and Nele.” By Gale Bates. Island Heritage. $12.95.
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Nene Nele learns to listen to her Tutu Nene in Gale Bates’ children’s story set in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Tutu regales her grandchildren with tales of the dangers nene face in the wild, and with the creatures that hunt and kill nene young. But Nele forgets those stories when she gets the chance to slip out of the pen in which she and other young nene are kept safe in the park.
Yuko Green’s illustrations are at times whimsical and, when necessary, a bit scary, matching well with the story’s action.
“Fortunato Teho’s Hawaii Gardens.” By Corinne Villa-Riese and Ted Riese. $9.95.
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Corinne Villa-Riese brings back her grandfather, Fortunato Teho’s, gardening expertise for a new generation of Hawaii gardeners in this self-published collection of Teho’s newspaper columns and other writings. Teho, a horticultural writer and broadcaster from the late 1940s through the mid-1980s, had many items published in West Hawaii Today.
The book also serves as Teho’s biography, tracing his life from his birth in Manila in 1908, to becoming the first Filipino to become a naturalized U.S. citizen in Hawaii, to his later years, filled with public service.
“Fortunato Teho’s Hawaii Gardens” is available on Amazon, both in paperback and e-book form.