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Garden expert and lovable eccentric Ruth Stout once said: �At the age of 87 I grow vegetables for two people the year-round, doing all the work myself and freezing the surplus. I tend several flower beds, write a column every week, answer an awful lot of mail, do the housework and cooking-and never do any of these things after 11 o�clock in the morning!� Her first book about her no-work gardening system, How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back, was the kind of book people can�t bear to return. She reports, �A dentist in Pennsylvania and a doctor in Oregon have both written me that they keep a copy of my garden book in their waiting rooms. Or try to; the dentist has had twenty-three copies stolen, the doctor, sixteen.� Gardening Without Work is her second gardening book and is even more entertaining and instructional than the first, so hide it from your friends! How does it work? �And now let�s get down to business. The labor-saving part of my system is that I never plow, spade, sow a cover crop, harrow, hoe, cultivate, weed, water or irrigate, or spray. I use just one fertilizer (cottonseed or soybean meal), and I don�t go through the tortuous business of building a compost pile. Just yesterday, under the �Questions and Answers� in a big reputable farm paper, someone asked how to make a compost pile and the editor explained the arduous performance. After I read this I lay there on the couch and suffered because the victim�s address wasn�t given; there was no way I could reach him. �My way is simply to keep a thick mulch of any vegetable matter that rots on both my vegetable and flower garden all year round. As it decays and enriches the soil, I add more. And I beg everyone to start with a much eight inches deep; otherwise, weeds may come through, and it would be a pity to be discouraged at the very start.� Regardless of topic, Ruth Stout�s writing is always about living a joyous and independent life, and Gardening Without Work is no exception! This book is a treasure for the gardener and a delight even to the non-gardener. First published in 1961, this Norton Creek Press version is an exact reproduction of the original edition, with illustrations by Nan Stone.