LIVING WITHOUT LAWN: RETHINKING THE FRONT YARD
By Russell Steven Powell
Brook Hollow Press
brookhollowpress.net
Though he’d been convinced for years that global warming was a real and growing threat, Hatfield writer Russell Steven Powell says he had a harder time kicking one habit that contributed to that problem: mowing his lawn — incessantly — with a gas-powered machine.
“I am a recovering addict,” Powell writes in “Living Without Lawn,” one of his two new books. “My drug of choice? Grass. Not cannabis, but the crew-cut lawn.”
That sentence is a good example of the engaging, first-person narrative Powell brings to the book. It’s not a conventional gardening book. He combines personal history, philosophical observations of the natural world and a step-by-step explanation of how he transformed his front lawn into an ornamental garden of mixed plants, stonework and other objects.
Powell, who’s also a painter and photographer, includes many of his color photos to illustrate the changes to his property over a five-year period; he also reworked an overgrown flower garden in his backyard to make it more varied and picturesque.
And he spells out the whys and wherefores of that work: He sees it as a small step you can take to reduce your environmental footprint, and it also brings you a bit closer to nature, while providing a bit of exercise (he uses a manual mower these days for occasional grass trimming).
“Activating one’s inner gardener does not have to take much time,” he writes. “But breaking the boring, repetitive cycle of feeding and watering a lawn in order to mow it opens up a whole new world of pleasures.”
With experience as a journalist, magazine editor and graphic designer, Powell says “Living Without Lawn” and his second new book (see below) also represent his foray into self-publishing. He did basic design for the books with a software program called InDesign, which gives him editorial control of his material; he did have some help from a graphic designer to finalize the books.
By printing on demand, and also having the ability to update his text at any point, he keeps his overall costs low, he says. This also lets him shape the books stylistically, he adds, by “mixing and matching styles to fit my topic, and by including original illustrations.
“I think it suits my subject matter, appeals to contemporary readers, and points toward a new way of thinking about the book,” he notes.
FEELING THE HEAT: TEMPERATURE AND TIME SENSITIVE
By Russell Steven Powell
Brook Hollow Press
brookhollowpress.net
In “Feeling the Heat,” Powell offers a range of essays on where he finds himself in the world and his response to it. Whether it’s climate change, the growth of cyberspace, travel or the challenge of painting in a world awash in instant, throwaway images, the Hatfield writer takes stock of his life and his responsibilities as a citizen of planet Earth.
By including many of his photos and reproductions of his abstract landscape paintings, Powell also offers visual counterpoints to his writing.
In “Heat Wave, Day 103,” for instance, he reflects, during a stretch of scorching summer temps, on how he can adjust to hot weather without relying on the crutch of air conditioning, just as people did before its invention — before the energy used to produce air conditioning began adding to global warming, creating a vicious cycle.
“It is good to go slow for awhile,” he writes. “We could all stand to be a little less comfortable. We might come through scorching stretches like this stronger, more tolerant, with a greater appreciation for our time and place in history.”
The essay is matched with what could be an abstract desert landscape of rumpled, magenta ground and a sky of orange, gold and yellow — warm but not harsh tones.
Powell sees his engagement with the world in different measures: good (“the act of painting; communing with nature; walking and owning a dog”), bad (“climate change”), and ugly (“littering the planet”). But all of it has value, he writes, and gives him a sense of purpose and responsibility.
“The most pressing challenges of my age, from climate change and environmental degradation to income inequity and greed, need all of my attention. My generation’s actions will have consequences for decades. … To have an impact, I need to use all my time wisely. It is all I have.”