Autumn 2019

Last issue I announced that beginning September 1, the price of a one-year subscription was going to rise to $24.95 (our first increase in 19 years!). I offered you readers a last chance to renew at our old rates.   READ MORE

Mary Ekstrand: “I live on a small saltwater bay in Puget Sound. I am an avid gardener with flowers, vegetables, and fruit trees. I think of the bromeliad in my story every time I buy a pineapple!”

Debbie Morris: A doctor and college professor, Debbie lives in rural NC and had stories in Issues 112, 113, and 116.  READ MORE

Hey, Mom,” my nine-year-old son Andy called to me from the living room. “Brett wants to know about your new plant. What is it?”  READ MORE

I used to be very nearsighted, but I didn’t get my first glasses until I was seven. I didn’t mind. From an early age I loved to sit on the ground, in the grass, at the beach, or in the garden, and examine all of the interesting tiny things I saw.  READ MORE

My father’s favorite musical was “The Fantasticks.“ He loved to sing. Dad was also a gardener, an avid gardener. I’m not sure I tasted a grocery store tomato before my teens. As a child, I had no patience for gardening.  READ MORE

It all started when my newly minted husband, Paul, and I bought our first house. We stood on the back porch, surveying our empty yard. There were no trees, no bushes, no flowers—just a wide expanse of grass. I then uttered the fateful words: “We need to plant a garden.”  READ MORE

My name is Christian Bell, and I am a junior in high school from Greenwood—a small community a few miles outside of Midland, Texas. Ever since I can remember, I have enjoyed gardening with my family in our backyard.   READ MORE

In the early days of our friendship, Marge and I became known as “The Gardening Fools.” We acquired this title working in Marge’s kitchen garden. It wasn’t our fault. It was due to some unlovely tomato worms, the ones that apparently aspired to the growth patterns of zucchini.  READ MORE

Back in the day, my best friend Marge and I became known as The Gardening Fools. This was due to that incident with the gigantic tomato worm we dispatched via VW bug. Well, that and a little mishap with sod.  READ MORE

Late last Spring there were suddenly potted flowers in bloom for sale everywhere, offering an instant Summer garden. They were very tempting. But I began wondering how they fit in: the birds were only just beginning to nest; the leaves were a tender newborn green.  READ MORE

If you look in my parents’ photo albums, you’ll see pictures of a little redheaded girl toddling around Kingwood Center and burying her nose in every flower she sees. Kingwood is a 47-acre estate turned public garden, so that’s a lot of flowers.  READ MORE

Nobody in the county was better at coaxing food out of the ground than Daddy. He had the thumb, they said. Daddy had a lot of sayings. The old ones, such as “If you chop your own firewood, you are warmed twice,” and “If at first you don’t succeed, get a bigger hammer.”  READ MORE

Much though I love the book, as a scientist I’ve always been suspicious of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden. For those gardeners who haven’t read it, this is the story of ten-year-old Mary Lennox, possibly the world’s most disagreeable orphan.   READ MORE

In the Springtime, gardeners everywhere rhapsodize about that glorious season of rebirth when the earth comes alive, bursting with new vitality. This is all wonderful, but there has to be a flip side. If Spring is the time of rebirth, then Autumn must be the season of redeath.  READ MORE

September 1797. The boy would be dead before dawn. He was fifteen, more handsome already than his famously handsome father, who had turned back toward New York City when he received the news. At best, the boy’s father would arrive in time to hold his son’s hand as the end came.  READ MORE

When my husband landed his dream job, we gleefully packed our bags and headed north to Maine, where we’d always wanted to live. We hadn’t looked very long before we found a sweet, neglected old Cape.  READ MORE