Grow to Live: By Pat FeatherstoneGrow to Live: A simple guide to growing your own good, clean food is a book that every South African food gardener, whether novice or not, needs to have on their bookshelf. I've become quite a collector of gardening books and there are some really informative books out there. Some were written in the 80's and 90's, or earlier, when it was fashionable to nuke your vegetables with every herbicide, pesticide, fungicide and other -icide known. You were advised to routinely spray with the likes of Malathion, Karbaspray, Metasystox and other chemical weapons of mass destruction. And you had to know all about applying the right proportion of NPK (Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium) ala 2:3:2, 2:3:4, 3:2:1 or whatever. Well, following this advice would lead to a 5:4:3:2:1 explosion and the death of life in your garden.

So now you know what the book is not about, enter Grow to Live. This is a book that will make your heart soar as an organic gardener. The book distills the considerable knowledge

waste: you are what you eat; but also what you wasteThis is perhaps one of the most shocking books I have ever read. I know we live in an age that glorifies consumerism, but I had never really contemplated the waste that goes hand in hand with this mentality. Forget the fact that consumerism is the religion of the twenty first century, waste is our religion. One may wish that this was something out of science fiction, but its not.

Waste – Uncovering the Global Food Scandal is one of the most important environmental books anyone can ever read. It shows you the inherent flaws in our current system. The book delineates the ways in which every action we take when we buy food has a huge effect, on world wastage, poverty, economics, deforestation and climate change. This book is meticulously researched with 68 pages of bibliography full of facts and figures. Yet the book is gripping. This is not some boring academic tome. Stuart compels you to read, like some horrific industrial thriller, and suddenly it hits you – this is reality. This is an incredibly sobering book.

What have you eaten for breakfast today? Toast? Think about it. Where did that bread come from?

This thought provoking and lucid film was shown on the 22nd March 2010: World Water Day at the Two Oceans Aquarium. With sponsorship from Pick 'n Pay and support from GreenHouse. It explores the idea put forward by the UN: Clean Water for a Healthy Earth.

FLOW shows us how quickly we are running out of fresh water. 70% of fresh water is used in agriculture and another 20% in industry, yet it is the common person that bears the brunt of the water shortage. Thousands of people die yearly due to a lack of access to fresh water, yet the clean water is available to them. At a cost. Water is now a for profit industry and the 3rd World is being forced into allowing private industry to gain control of their water.

The road

Some of you may have recently caught The Road on the big screen here in South Africa, sadly I missed it and may have to wait for the DVD. In the meantime, however I have read the book. I always find that books can be so much more revealing, as there are details that cannot be translated on to the big screen due to time constraints.

The Road, is a post apocalyptic story that shows McCarthy's skills as a writer. In 2007, the novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Imagine a world where life is dying, ash rains down and the world is freezing. There is little or no food and warmth. This is the world that McCarthy conjures up. However, the subtext is that this is not too far from being a reality.

Invaded: Leonie JoubertDid you know that there is a secret war going on right here in South Africa? That we are being invaded? No, illegal Zimbabweans are not to blame. Instead Leonie Joubert's book refers to the biological invasion of South Africa. No, not biological warfare either, but rather the movement of new species into habitats in South Africa and the ecological impact they have on the environment.

A Sea ChangeA Sea Change is a gentle documentary, in contrast to some of the documentaries which give you nightmares for months afterwards like Earthlings. This documentary looks at the topic of ocean acidification which is something most people are not aware of. We are aware that the oceans absorb carbon dioxide, in fact scientists have been looking for ways to make the oceans absorb more carbon dioxide in an attempt to reduce climate change. However, as the level of carbon dioxide in the ocean increases, so does the acidity of the ocean. The change so far has been very slight and mostly in colder areas but the implications are huge.

There is something of the sacred in Hogsback. Perhaps it is the ethereal proximity of dense, indigenous forests that hint at faery folk, or its remoteness that make it so. But few people leave here without some element of reparation, even if it is simply their faith in the beauty of nature that is restored.

The approach to the eco shrine, which the artist Diana Graham calls the 'Voice of the Earth Eco shrine', does much to reinforce this impression. It is a tunnel formed by lean, leafy Hazelnut trees that create a vortex through which one moves from one time into another. Or so it seems.

As far as food markets go, the Wild Oats Market in Sedgefield on the Garden Route probably comes up tops. Residents of Sedgefield and visitors to the town head out in their droves on a Saturday morning to the edge of town right next to the Swartvlei lake-lagoon, where the market has a permanent home under the trees.

The market's full name is the Wild Oats Community Farmers' Market and it has won numerous awards during its ten year life span. Whilst I'd heard only good things about the farmers' market, I hadn't yet had the opportunity to visit it, but our road trip up to Hogsback had been conveniently carved into a number of stopovers that included Sedgefield, and the market was one of the first to make its way onto the itinerary.

When I first saw this little AA battery with a USB connection for recharging I thought it looked like a nifty gimmick, but what would I use it for? It's turned out to be quite handy as we've got a couple of battery operated kids toys and old torches lying around the house.

The usb battery is a rechargeable battery but instead of using a separate charging device to recharge it, the battery comes with a built-in male usb connection which can plug in to your laptop or pc's powered usb port. Like most other AA size rechargeable batteries it is a Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) cell, but it includes a cap which pops off to reveal the usb connection.

The usb connector is found on the negetive terminal side of the battery, covered by a cap which slides off easily but is attached with a little elastic band so can't get lost - clever idea.

As roughly a fifth of the battery's size

I do honestly believe that corporations are one of the fundamental reasons that the world is in the trouble it is in. So when I'm browsing Kalahari.net and I see a book titled When Corporations Rule The World, I have to buy it and read it.

I know that there are many books on this topic and I'm not sure what made me choose this one. The foreword is written by Danny Glover and Desmond Tutu calls it a 'must read book', but I don't think that is why I chose it. The author, David Korten is highly qualified in the fields of economics and business management, which is good but I didn't know that when I bought it. Whatever it is that made me choose this book, I'm glad it did because it's a very interesting and eye opening read.