Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front, by Sharon Astyk (New Society Publishers; $18.95) is subtitled One Woman's Solutions to Finding Abundance for Your Family While Coming to Terms With Peak Oil, Climate Change and Hard Times. A few suggestions from Appendix One:

- Urine is mostly sterile, and safe to add to plants. A person's yearly output can fertilize more than one quarter acre. Dilute the urine in a 10 to one ratio and use it on your garden.


- Summer is a good time to toilet train children. Let them run around naked outside, where accidents won't be a worry. You'll do less laundry in the winter if you get this done now.

- Most weeds contain valuable fertility (which they took from your garden) and trace minerals. Dump them in a bucket of water, let it sit for a few days and then pour it over plants.