Everything I Need to Know About Life I Learned from My Houseplants

Life is a journey and finding our place in that life can feel overwhelming. Who am I? Where do I belong? How do I cultivate a life that makes my heart happy?

“He who knows others is wise; he who knows himself is enlightened.” ― Lao Tzu

While there are many books written on self-discovery, Everything I Need to Know About Life I Learned from My Houseplants is unique in its approach by using the growth cycle and care of houseplants to impart wisdom and essential life lessons for living an authentic life.

Throughout the book, the author’s own journey of personal growth unfolds alongside practical information and care tips for raising happy, healthy houseplants. While this little book tackles some tough topics, such as her struggle with depression and experience in an abusive relationship, it is done with a lightness and humour that makes you feel like you’ve known the author for years.

This book will leave you feeling inspired and ready to change and improve your own life, as well as those of your houseplants.

Evolution: The Pattern

The origin of life is the fusion of two slightly different halves: fusion-fission, fusion-fission, fusion-fission… the rhythm of Life. In the beginning of all beginnings, an energetic proton and neutral neutron had fused into one whole. On planet Earth, the fusion took monumental proportions until the mating ritual has reached the highest conceivable degree. Love has a power to create life but also has a power to destroy it if its integrity is violated. Psychopath-men attack women, psychopath-women attack own children while breast, prostate and colorectal carcinomas are responsible for more than 20% human deaths whose incidence in great apes is less than 2%. Are humans on the decline? To find out this we have to unravel the mystery of the origin of life. Only if the sequence of the events in the story of life is correct, a pattern will emerge.

Exploitation

Exploitation is an unceasingly fast-paced, action-packed, graphic, and red-hot account of one man’s battle to cauterise the human trafficking money flow from infectious criminal organisations as they tirelessly replicate and engage in barbarous internecine warfare.

It is narrated by the controversial, yet – mostly – justified, protagonist, who solely gets his hands bloodied – sometimes regrettably – as an assassin for a Russian crime family in order to gather intelligence on their human trafficking operations.

Round after round of being bludgeoned, hunted, manipulated, and lied to takes its toll on the narrator. This forces him to grow increasingly reliant on his knowledge, wit, and resourcefulness, as well as his own professional network.

If you commit a crime, he will be understanding. If you have any involvement in human trafficking, he will be ruthless.

Exploitation

In Exploitation, readers are taken on a heart-wrenching journey through the mind and experiences of a frontline soldier. Through intense and extreme pressure, the soldier must navigate their way through the challenges of combat and emerge on the other side. With raw and emotional storytelling, this book offers a unique insight into the thoughts and actions of those on the front lines, leaving readers with a deeper understanding of the challenges and sacrifices of military service.

Faerie Tale

When the forest fairies notice the changes in the forest, the Oracle declares that they must recover the four fairy treasures from the elemental fairies;

“The darkness that has grown for many years,
the terror that every fairy fears.
But with the fairies’ growing plight,
hope is returned by a single light.
One chance we have to correct this wrong,
this hope will need to grow strong.
Because if the four races cannot unite,
the one will fail in the final fight.
You will need the earth’s wisdom to have its say,
You will fail without a flame to guide your way,
You need the air’s knowledge that is kept
You will fail without the water’s emotional depth.
These four elements are needed for all fairies’ creation,
to twist them is the darkness’s motivation.
To stop it collect the Tuatha De Danann’s four treasures,
even though the darkness will try to stop these measures.”

The Oracle sees that Elizabeth is the only fairy with a chance. The Dark Fairy tries to thwart their friendship and collection of the treasures, even invading their dreams with pixie magic.

Meeting friends along the journey and gaining wisdom from the elemental races, Elizabeth learns the true meaning of being a fairy. Can Elizabeth and her friends collect the treasures, unite the races and defeat the dark fairy to save the forest?

Fastovski's Tales of Hampstead

Imagine that Isaac Babel’s Cossacks wassail together with Runyonesque Liverpool Jews outside the plate-glass window of a Hampstead café where a Klezmer band is playing to a packed and tea-drinking congregation of jazzmen, Hasidic scholars, surrealists, old soldiers, and retired strippers; and you have the tone and temperature of this unique and unclassifiable memoir – no, not memoir, more a stream-of-consciousness novella – no, not a novella but a piece of autobiographical fiction – no, not autobiography but a picaresque drama conquered from the unreliable and fertile brain of the eponymous Fastovski.

And who is Fastovski? Is he real or invented? Is he perhaps the alter-ego of real-life jazz pianist, Klezmer swinger, big band leader and flaneur, Wallace Fields, who stares at us from the book’s frontispiece in shades, Diaghilev coat and moustache, over a cup of strong black coffee? Fastovski’s not telling and anyway, who cares.

This is a book to be devoured, disseminated, denounced, and delighted in. It belongs to all who think art and life are one and that the Arch-Savant of Canterbury, Issy Bonn, Rashid the Manic Berber Chef of NW3, and Mrs Karl Popper, have an equal claim on history. I haven’t had such a good time since I shared Sir Ralph Richardson’s motorbike with a parrot and a striking grandmother clock.

Piers Plowright
August 2008

Fate and The Lady

Fate and the Lady follows the modern day story of district nurse Christina Wise and her chance meeting with enigmatic ex-quarryman Mercy Slaughter and his friend FJ.

Christina will be tested in her feelings for this man and his obsessive need to right a wrong committed against himself and his friends during a medieval battle re-enactment only a couple of years previously. His compulsion risks putting them all in mortal danger and even result in an international incident.

Will Christina be able to save Slaughter from himself, or will he continue in his path of self-destruction?

Add to the mix a French politician and his sidekick with an axe to grind; a hardcore group of Englishmen with vengeance in mind; and a mysterious Turkish billionairess with her own designs on Slaughter; and you end up with a volatile mix of sex, intrigue and bloody hand-to-hand combat.

Feelings of the Moment

Ahmed, a young man hailing from the Middle East, relocates to America to study. In the US, he sees, and is excited by, a sexual freedom uncommon in his homeland, and vows to live his young life to the full. Initially staying in Colorado with a married couple, Ahmed seduces Debbie, who is unappreciated by her husband, and his voyage of passion begins.

More encounters with American women follow, as Ahmed invites them to surrender to both themselves and to him; though with his appetite for sexual exploration unsatiated, he returns to the United Arab Emirates, applying the same methods, albeit covertly in a more conservative society, to embolden the women he meets to revel in their sexuality, and make their lustful fantasies a reality.

Ahmed realizes that the women he meets both at home and abroad, even those enjoying a Westernised sexual liberty, are oppressed in their own way, unable to express themselves as they truly desire, with some of them starved of intimate pleasure by husbands who have settled for a boring, predictable way of life. Acting on this, he encourages them to explore their deepest desires, and as they surrender to those hidden yearnings and the feelings of the moment, they embrace each other’s bodies with zeal, satisfying needs that, for some, have been left unfulfilled for years.

Final Settlement

Life during South Africa’s apartheid times had been idyllic for the white residents of a small village in the picturesque Nede Valley. Ken Chandler witnessed this when he moved there from England. However, he thought things would need to change following the abolition of apartheid and he saw that the nature and governance in the nearest towns and smaller townships had changed rapidly to suit the needs of the Zulu and Indian residents, but nothing had changed within the Nede valley.

How they were to maintain a “whites only” village was a major concern for its residents, but how were they to achieve this? Would it be amicably achieved or would they need to resort to violence? Eventually, change was brought about in the village, but not in a way that anyone would have envisaged.

Finger of Suspicion

This novel depicts events that happened to officers from Strathclyde Police covering the periods between 1990 and 2003. The names have been changed in most circumstances to protect those involved but the detail within the stories reflect events that happened and written by me in my own words as an interpretation of what I recall.

Being a police officer during this time was rewarding and I met many lovely people whilst I worked there and still remain friends with many of them.

Policing during that era was difficult and drugs were a major scourge in the deprived areas in the north of Glasgow and many families lost loved ones through overdose or other serious drug related illnesses. The criminal gangs operated in these areas ruled by fear with many drug dealers only doing it to repay a debt.

The stories provide an insight into a behind the scenes look at how investigations are managed and the characters involved in running them. It is a sad depiction of life at the front end of policing, dealing with death and misery. More alarmingly, it will discuss the lack of support provided by senior officers towards other lower level colleagues.

The author used every power of strength and determination to set the record straight with some of the events and was helped by a few other like-minded friends. It is a story of belief in one another and colleagues involved in these incidents all looked out for one another—which didn’t always happen but I am glad we did!

FiveChamp

Discover an electrifying tale where Mother Nature herself orchestrates a new dawn for humanity, converging five extraordinary strangers in the pulsating heart of New York City. Together, they form FiveChamp, a sports team unlike any the world has ever seen, epitomizing endurance, determination, strength, and sportsmanship. But can any team possibly defeat them? The stakes are high: it’s the world versus five!

As they navigate the high-octane arena of sports, FiveChamp also grapples with a darker challenge: the insidious corruption and underworld mafias infiltrating the glamorous world of athletics. Their battle intensifies when an infamous New York serial killer is mysteriously resurrected, unleashing chaos in the city they call home.

Immerse yourself in the gripping saga of FiveChamp as they battle both human vice and supernatural malevolence. Armed with unwavering teamwork and virtuous sportsmanship, they not only aim to vanquish evil but also inspire a new paradigm for unity and valour. Can they triumph over overwhelming odds and capture our hearts? The clock is ticking, and the game has just begun.

Fleeting Images from a Bloodied Past

Ships against the sea! Was…STILL IS, a threat to all the vessels who sail upon her, and especially so, an ever-present threat to the crews who do their duty and put their lives in harm's way. Of violent storms, tempests… All the unpredictable hell of crosswinds, headwinds and tailwinds, roaring madly like some frenzied monster, changing direction, attempting to plunge the man-made object under the vengeful, towering and swamping thunderous waves, against which so many hardy ships have foundered, perished and been lost. The fact that the CSS Alabama came through such a storm and survived this maelstrom is testimony to the meticulous skills and concentrated painstaking patience and hard work of Laird's well-led and well-managed shipbuilding workforce and professional seamanship, that ensured the crew's safe passage and escape from this seaborne wretchedness. Warships, which survived incredible battle experience, and - at war's end - were reviewed for conversion, replacement or the breaker's yard was a consideration. Not all, however, because the fate of HMS Zealous continued in a new page of history, when she was transferred to the Israeli Navy. Later, in 1967, whilst out on patrol in the Eastern Mediterranean, she was suddenly attacked by Egyptian warships equipped with superior firepower. The new crew of this old warhorse knew that the fate of their emerging and vibrant new nation, fighting to retain her hard-fought existence, was dependent upon their spirited defence. Despite the fact that they were up against Soviet-supplied STYX surface-to-surface missiles, against which they had no defence, they steered into battle, undaunted. With battle pennants flying, they bravely challenged the enemy. Their fearlessness and courage shone in the face of certain destruction and ultimate sacrifice. The Cammell Laird scenario is riveting and strikingly dramatic…