Request for book recommendations

I need a gardening icon...

Anyway, since I am feeling a wee bit overwhelmed by the plethora of books out there on gardening/homesteading/living more ecologically, I am turning to my very well-educated flist for advice.

Please recommend good books to me on these subjects. I would prefer books geared toward beginners/people who are otherwise ignorant of these things, but if a book is considered a "bible" on a topic, even if it's a little advanced, that's fine. Likewise for other advanced books, if they're written clearly and relatively simply, and maybe provide a glossary for their terms. ;)

Also, are there any good gardening communities out there on LJ?

Making changes

I came to the realization sometime toward the end of March/beginning of April that many of my priorities have changed along with my new job and new interests. One of the sadder realizations I had was that I no longer really have the interest in gaming that I used to.

I still like roleplaying, don't get me wrong. It's just that I no longer feel good about setting aside huge chunks of time for it at the expense of all the other things I do in life, especially not when I spend so many of my weekends working now. While I get to spend time with my friends while gaming, it's also four to six hours of time in which I could be seeing other friends whom I haven't seen in a really long time, or in which I could be simply hanging out with my friends *as ourselves*.

The same appears to be getting increasingly true for online gaming as well. I'm only involved in one game online these days, but the amount of time it requires is slowly but surely beginning to take a toll. I find I'm no longer especially passionate about it, which is unfortunate. I still like it, and I love the people I game with (well, some of them, anyway, most of them the ones I also know IRL), but I'm seriously starting to wonder if I'm not just staying there out of a sense of obligation, which if we're honest does all of us a disservice. I'm taking up valuable slots in the game which could be given to other, more enthusiastic players who would post more reliably. I have a tendency to disappear when work gets out of hand, especially when I'm on night shift (like last week and this coming week), and often enough that forces people to wait for me, or work around me, and that's not fair to anyone.

So it looks like I'm going to have to do some serious thinking about all this. My IRL game is going to come to a natural end by the end of next month, and after that I won't be actively involving myself in any others. That's not a problem, regrettable as it is to give up what was an important passtime for me for so many years. The real question is whether or not I should still be involved in Skywatch. It's a wrench, because I've been in that game for close to seven years, and I've got a lot invested in it. Hell, pulling out now would seriously mangle a number of plans that I have with other players, and that's a major consideration as well. At this point, I can't tell if it would be worse to stay in and not be giving it my all, or to pull out and leave people and plotlines in the lurch, no matter how gradually I try to ease out.

Meh. Thinking about these things at 3am is never a good idea.