Harvesting Inspiration, a Guest Post by Sarah Stewart Taylor

RHYS BOWEN:  So many good books coming out around this time! Not only are we celebrating my release and Lucy's next week, but several good friends of the Reds also have new books out. I'm happy to be hosting Sarah Stewart Taylor today, calebrating her new book HUNTER'S HEART RIDGE. And Sarah is here to share about a subject close to my own heart: flowers.  I love flowers. When I go to the farmer's market to buy beans and plums I often return with a bunch of freshly cut flowers as well. I'd love to have an English garden full of scents and blooms but alas I live on a hill where deer wander freely and devour anything that isn't oleander. But I'm living vicariously through Sarah's flowers today!

SARAH STEWART TAYLOR:

 While harvesting flowers in my cut flower garden this morning, I thought to myself, “Alice Bellows would be so proud of my scabiosa.”

Alice Bellows is not a real person. She is a character in my series of novels set in 1960s rural Vermont. In the series starter, Agony Hill, Alice, who has returned to her hometown to live after the suspicious death of her CIA-connected husband and a lifetime of espionage adventures of her own, makes flower arrangements for a town celebration, gives arrangements to friends, and spends hours upon hours in the peace of her meticulously-designed and well-tended gardens.

At some point over the last couple of years, I realized that my interest in flowers and Alice’s had begun to flow together so that I wasn’t sure where one started and the other ended. Like Alice, I became absolutely obsessed with growing cut flowers for bouquets.

I’ve always loved growing things. We have a perennial garden, planted by my late mother-in-law, at our farm that I have fun caring for, and I have often planted sunflowers or zinnias and enjoyed harvesting the blooms. But two years ago, after one too many visits to Floret Flower Farm’s Instagram account, I realized that I wanted to try growing cut flowers myself and that I wanted to learn how to arrange them.

There’s something about being able to present a friend or family member who is celebrating or going through something difficult with a glorious arrangement of home-grown flowers. Flowers, lovely but short-lived, force us to slow down and notice the sublime, to revel in the miracle of nature’s wildly varied colors and shapes.

So, last summer, I started preparing the beds and grew a few varieties of zinnias and cosmos. Over the winter, I read and researched and ordered way too many seeds. When my husband gave me a seed-starting set up, complete with grow lights, my new hobby began to bloom, so to speak.

While snow blanketed the ground outside my windows, I started about twenty varieties of cut flowers from seed: snapdragons, scabiosa, yarrow, strawflower, feverfew, veronica, celosia, gomphrena, zinnias, cosmos, and more. Every day I would check the little seedlings, watering them, turning them to the lights, and dreaming about the day they would finally reach maturity.

I can’t tell you how much joy it has given me to watch them grow, first inside and then out in my garden. In so many ways, cut flower gardening is an excellent antidote to the ups and downs of writing and publishing. Weeding and watering give me a great excuse to get up from the computer and when my words don’t feel particularly well-composed or beautiful, I can create order and art with the flowers. I don’t know exactly where I’m going with this passion; I’m hoping to have a farmstand and sell bouquets at some point, but I have a lot to learn before that will be possible. 

Doing the work of growing all of these flowers has helped me to understand Alice better too. After the danger and uncertainty of her married life, she has found peace and satisfaction in her gardens. There is also a secret in her past that draws her to her beds and borders and, since these are mystery novels, in Agony Hill and its follow up, Hunter‘s Heart Ridge, which comes out August 5th, Alice begins to suspect that her past in the intelligence world is not completely in the past. 

Whatever happens to her though, I know she’ll keep growing flowers and I’ll be gardening and arranging right alongside her.

Have you ever shared a hobby with a fictional character?

SARAH STEWART TAYLOR is the author of the Sweeney St. George series, set in New England, the Maggie D’arcy mysteries, set in Ireland and on Long Island, and Agony Hill and Hunter’s Heart Ridge, set in rural Vermont in the 1960s.

 Sarah has been nominated for an Agatha Award, the Dashiell Hammett Prize, and the MWA Sue Grafton Memorial Award and her mysteries have appeared on numerous Best of the Year lists. A former journalist and teacher, she writes and lives with her family on a farm in Vermont where they raise sheep and grow blueberries. You can learn more about her at www.SarahStewartTaylor.com. Visit her on Instagram and Facebook to see more of her flowers!

How does your garden grow?

Jenn McKinlay: When the Hooligans were little, we always had a garden patch. It wasn’t very big but I felt it was important for them to grow things like watermelon or tomatoes. When they hit the teen years there was no time and less interest (on their part), but now that I’m a free bird I’m back to the garden!

Life has been stressful in 2025 (understatement), so I thought adding the life and death drama of raising veggies would be an awesome idea—just kidding, mostly. But seriously, instead drowning in anxiety, I am outside I do think Martha (see below) is onto something.

It all started with one raised bed last fall and now we’re onto two raised beds and several wooden barrels that I can move out of the sun as needed.

What am I growing? So glad you asked!

Cherry tomatoes (this crazy plant survived the entirety of last summer and has produced hundreds of cherry tomatoes this year).

Grapes! Really didn’t think this guy would take off but he’s thriving! And I have loads of baby grapes!

Potatoes: My Thanksgiving taters sprouted eyes, so I chopped them up and stuck them in the ground! Very exciting!

Zucchini: A bit of a pervy looking plant but I try not to judge.

I also have shishito peppers, cucumbers, cantaloupe, pole beans, and eggplant. For herbs, surviving from last year (I planted the seeds), we have parsley, oregano, thyme, basil, rosemary, mint, and lavender.

So, where are my gardeners? What are you planting? Any tips and advice welcome!

The garden is ALIVE! by Jenn McKinlay

 Punk rocker or Elvis? 

JENN McKINLAY: This was not my originally planned post for this day, but Hooligan 1 and I were thinning the lemon tree when we found this guy amongst the leaves. Y'all I have a punk rock mohawk wearing lemon! I know he looks like a lime, but he would have been a lemon if he hadn't been a part of the culling. I feel rather bad about that, actually. 

Of course, then I had to do a deep dive on wacky shaped things people have found in their gardens and so I share with you because starting the weekend with a laugh sets the tone, don't you think?

This eggplant looks like a therapist reserving judgment...barely.

A strawberry flutterby?
(Butterfly never made sense to me but flutterby does so that's sorted).

This radish looks like she's ready for the catwalk at fashion week.

Tomayto-tomahto, either is just ducky with this fella.

The pepper is in a fizz! The horror of being halved?

Perhaps potato bear and can hug it out with the pepper? LOL.

All right, Reds and Readers, what weird and wacky things have you found in your garden or the produce section of the grocery? 

Hacking it Back: Julia in the garden

Back yard? Property? The landscape?

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I really need to find a better name to describe the 3 acres around my old Maine farmhouse, because "garden" conjures up the wrong vibe (as the kids say.) It's not really landscaping, because, well, so much of it is overgrown. There are the bones of previous decades landscaping  - Ross's many, many bulbs, the other flowers he's planted in beds that were once nice and round but now seem to have melted slightly, the initial three forsythia that have become 300 forsythia, etc, etc.

 

 

The garden enthusiast in my marriage was Ross; my job was to help pull and prune where he told me and to have a cold beer waiting for him when he came in from mowing. So it's been a steep learning curve, now the whole she-bang in my responsibility. The last time he was able to work on it was the summer of  '15, and I was, shall we say, taken aback at just how quickly my nicely maintained grounds were determined to become Longfellow's forest primeval.

 

Can you spot the apple tree?

I decided to rally my forces and tackle one or two important tasks each year to push back the jungle. I really don't want visitors to expect me to come to the door in a head scarf and fur coat. Two summers ago, when the Guest Son was living here, he took down and chopped a whole lot of deadfall wood, made me a compost pile and several garden bed containers, and killed 90% of the Japanese knotweed infesting the back with Roundup. (I've always tried to keep it organic, but sometimes, you need to hire an assassin.)

 

 

Last summer, one of my young friends helped revitalize my front porch flowerbed, my cousins chainsawed the Yews of Doom that were literally darkening my front door, and we kept all the grassy areas - one half to three quarters of an acre - well mowed.

 

This year, my goal is to get rid of my foul nemeses, the Asian invasives. I have oriental bittersweet. I have multiflora roses. I have non-native honeysuckle. And, native but oh-so-annoying, the forsythia that's rooted itself everywhere and the sumac saplings that must have been spread by seed to different zones in the back, as the ONE parent tree I want to live is next to the shed in the front yard.

 

My enemy, the bittersweet

Every non-rainy morning this month, after doggie breakfast, I head out back with the pups, my deerskin working gloves, and my lopper. I've pulled bittersweet vines out of the ground. I've cut out raspberry canes (they also spread everywhere.) I've taken out multiflora roses that have grown fifteen feet up into the apple trees. 

 

This is neither glamorous or creative work, but it is deeply satisfying. Unlike, say, writing a book, where a good day's work is 1/120th of the whole, when I've clipped my way through a tangle of thorny vines that look like the defenses around Sleeping Beauty's castle, I can see the tangible results in a pile on the ground and in a path through the briars. 

 

 

 

Cleared! Well, partly.

There are still real roses and wanted forsythia to prune, grape vines to rehang, flower beds to mulch and daffodils to divide and replant. Non of that is going to happen this year, and that's okay! 

 

Dear readers, what are the long-focus, dirty jobs that you find yourself enjoying?

 

 

Spring Chores

 JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: This past Saturday was the astronomical First Day of Spring here in the northern hemisphere, and amazingly, here in Maine it was the start of several days of bright and sunny weather. (As an aside, when growing up, I learned the equinoxes and solstices were on the 21st. Has that changed? Or do we just know about the exact day and hour because of the internet now?) In my yard, piles of snow have melted to a few icy lumps, and you need wellies to walk about anywhere outdoors because the turf everywhere is the consistency of a peat bog. No sign of crocuses yet (I didn’t rake out the bed in the fall, so they’re fighting through sodden dead vegetation) but the daffodil shoots are up.

All of this gets me thinking about… spring chores. We all have them - even you snowbirds will be thinking about cleaning and planning for the move north, right? For the outdoors at my place, it’s going to be clearing away branches and raking. We’ve had a freakish number of wind storms, and wherever I have trees on the property it looks like a massive game of pick-up-sticks. As for the raking, I confess I wasn’t quite on top of it this past fall, and so got caught out when we had a November snowstorm. The good news is it’s a LOT easier to tote old, dead, dried leaves than it is to move them around when they’re fresh off the tree.

Inside, the increasing sunlight has led me to notice the effects of a whole winter’s worth of 1) multiple pets indoors 2) blown hot air going constantly and 3) burning wood, ditto. In the Before Times, I would have been cleaning up the dust/hair more aggressively, but let’s face it - with no friends over, no dinner parties, no one except me and occasional daughters in the house at all - there hasn’t been a ton of motivation. But it’s got to be dealt with by the time the really warm weather rolls around, if only to prevent dust tornadoes when I have the windows open. (What a sweet thought! The open windows, not the flying dust.)

How about you, Reds? What’s on your list of spring chores?

JENN McKINLAY: I just spent last weekend spring cleaning - washing every inch of the inside of the house, including moving the furniture to see what new pets have spontaneously generated out of a few months of accumulated pet hair. Today is yard work day! Here in AZ we have to get it done before it gets too hot and with the thermometer flirting with the mid-80’s, that means NOW. My modest yard will be mowed, pruned, and edged and my annual sunflower patch will be planted to welcome the love birds back in June. Yay!  

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Chore number one: waiting for the ducks.  Chore number two: watching the crocuses and then tulips coming up.  Chore number three: Watching all birds in our back yard. Chore number four: Wondering who is going to dust around here, la dee dah. 

RHYS BOWEN: we arrived back at our Arizona house to find it immaculate! We had loaned it to a friend of our daughter who couldn’t move into a new home on time and obviously they paid for a cleaning service. And left us a toaster oven! So no hard cleaning here. However when we get back to CA I’m sure there will be plenty waiting for us. We have been going through closets, throwing out clothes, also John has reorganized the pantry. Otherwise enjoying glorious weather and seeing friends!

HALLIE EPHRON: Our crocuses and snowdrops and blue scilla are starting to emerge and today I took the patio chairs out of the garage. And I walked to the mailbox without a coat. And a screech owl has returned to nest in a tree across the street and the bird bath is teeming with chickadees. Yesterday I saw 8 robins on someone’s lawn. SPRING!

I’m ready for it. Last fall I had the house painted and the yard cleaned up; a few months ago I had all the area rugs removed, cleaned, and replaced. Now I’m looking out through smudgy windows. I’ll call the window washers and soon I’ll be spring-watching through clear windows.

LUCY BURDETTE: We will be packing up and heading north sometime soon, so that’s as close to spring cleaning as I’ll get. John has quite a garden out on our small balcony, so all that will have to be given away or something. Meanwhile, what I really need to focus on is WRITING!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: You and me both, Lucy! But, ugh, my house is so dirty, worse than it's been this entire last year, and I just can't seem to get on top of it. And now spring chores! Putting up winter clothes, throw pillows, blankets, etc. Getting summer clothes out of the attic. Lots of stuff to do in the garden, getting all the dead plants out of pots, putting in new ones. Fertilizing roses, drenching crape myrtles, etc. The house desperately needs power-washing before we can spring clean the windows, but that is NOT MY JOB. A fun thing--the hummingbird feeders should go up today!

 

JULIA: How about you, dear readers? What's on your spring chores to-do list? 

Editing... my garden

HALLIE EPHRON: As a writer, I'm very much a magpie. I jot down bits and pieces of overheard dialogue, clip articles that intrigue me, weed through the essays and stories I wrote when I was learning to write and even from before I knew I wanted to... all with the hopes of putting together something original and fresh. I wasn’t as good at writing back then, but details that make a scene come alive were much fresher in my mind.

In CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR I re-used most of an essay I wrote ages ago about my husband’s yard sale-ing. NIGHT NIGHT, SLEEP TIGHT has chunks of one of my earliest attempts to write about growing up in Beverly Hills. Bits of writing about my parents’ dysfunctional relationship with alcohol and one another stud my manuscripts.

So my "writing" is as much a process of borrowing and editing rather starting with a blank slate. My friends know that, when they tell me about something that happened to them, they have to say so if they don’t want me to put it into a book.

These days I feel as if my approach to writing has taken root in my garden.

My garden has never had a plan. It’s a quiet green oasis, a hodgepodge that has evolved over decades.

Sheltering us from our neighbors and muffling nearby sounds of traffic are mature bushes and beds stuffed with ground cover and perennials, survivors of my haphazard watering and never fertilizing. A gigantic maple tree shades the lot. Every day I go out, even for just a short time, and weed the unwanteds and rescue ‘volunteers’ seedlings that have taken root where they don’t belong.

Some of my plants were here when we moved in 40 years ago. Though I've lost all the old-fashioned chrysanthemums and lily-leaf beatles did in all the lovely Asiatic lilies, day lilies and hot pink phlox and leggy white rose campion thrive.

Hostas were here, too, a few growing on the side of the house. I’ve moved, separated, and moved and separated them, over and over so that now there are hosta borders all through the garden. They’re about to bloom.

Then there’s the special hosta, a blue-green variety with magnificent leaves that look like quilted satin. It started as a small plant, given to us by our friend Marjorie Hovorka who died not too long ago. Whenever I water those hostas I think of her.

Our yellow loosestrife and patch of Siberian irises came from other friends. Coneflowers came from Jane next door.

On the back steps is a pot of chives – thanks to Edith Maxwell. The creeping Jenny growing at the base of the  steps leaped the pot it came in and seeded itself among my patio stones. The plant was given to me by a friend who, soon after, committed suicide. It's flowering now.
As you might guess, our garden, with its dense ground cover and shoulder-to-shoulder bushes, is home to wildlife. We have at least 3 families of birds nesting right now… robins (here’s a scruffy young one), song sparrows, and cardinals.

And squirrels. At least four of them. They're like a circus act.


A month ago, I witnessed a pair of  squirrels barreling toward one other along the top of a wood fence. Never slowing, one of them leaped up and the other flew past beneath him. I wanted to stand up and applaud. I keep wondering, how did they know which one would jump and which would just keep going?


And a very cute tiny rabbit I’d like to murder has decimated my coneflowers. If only he’s stick to eating lily of the valley and clover in my weedy lawn.


Where's a hawk when you need it? 


So how do you grow your garden? Are you a planner or a pantser? Do you edit and weed or start from scratch?

Writing & Gardening Go Hand in Vine for Nancy Hughes

HALLIE EPHRON: There are so many apt analogies to what it's like to write a novel. Banging your head against a wall. Opening a vein. My favorite, from John Banville: "The novelist daily at his desk eats ashes, and if occasionally he encounters a diamond he is likely to break a tooth on it. Money is necessary to pay the dentist's bills."

Nancy Hughes, whose new mystery novel Vanished (the final book in her Trust trilogy) is just out, hits her stride and finds inspiration in her garden. 

NANCY HUGHES: Good morning, Jungle Reds! And thank you for inviting me to write a guest post. My delight is three-fold—To start many days with your delightful imagery. To reconnect with Hallie via Penn Writers, and to follow Hank, who was inordinately kind to me, a stranger, at my first Edgar Symposium ten years ago. I only share spare copies of your books, not those you signed with personal notes.

With the publication of my fourth novel, Vanished—the third in my Trust trilogy—I’m often asked questions about inspiration, which beg a truly original answers. Huh! Where indeed? Mine comes from snippets of people and places rolled into one single thought. I ask myself, what if? Suppose? And a single sentence emerges to drive a new story. 

From that summary sentence, the plot takes shape as a list. I woke one Saturday morning with the entire story for Vanished revealed to me in ten points. Ever the outliner, I went straight to my Mac. The book itself had to get in line and wait its turn behind three other novels, until I couldn’t leave it alone. Ultimately, the characters arrived, screaming to drive it, some by design and some uninvited.

I’m grateful for feedback. How else could I gauge my own work? Half my readers say I’m all about the plot; the others say it’s the characters. I believe that’s true of The Dying Hour.

The seeds for my mysteries germinate and grow as I garden. Literally! While I dig, mulch, plant and weed, my mind will not shut up, and the stories takes shape. Scenes as crisp as new dogwood blooms take over my imagination, as if the characters’ stage is my lawn and I’m hovering nearby. The task at hand fades as my mind watches.

Writing in rural Pennsylvania, beneath a canopy of hundred-foot trees that backdrop my shade gardens, sounds ideal for inspired writing. But it’s just as distracting to see deer munch my azaleas as hearing sirens and honking. And nature is itching to reclaim the land with poisonous tentacles, brambles, and hungry beasties.  

From April until October, I escape to my summer office, built from hundred-year-old barn boards by my husband who, silly man, thought potting shed. I wish you could see the view from my chair and footstool, Mac on my lap, gazing across an emerald expanse to a swath of azaleas fronted with impatience. Oh, the aaah power of flowers! The tranquility stills my overactive mind, inspiring quiet scenes and introspective characters.        

Fleshing out villains and their nefarious deeds fits perfectly with yanking entrenched poison ivy, trumpet vine and their ilk. And fixing problems of my own creation. “Here,” a successful shade gardener said as I ranted about my failure with roses. “This will grow anywhere.”  And it did—everywhere—taking three years to eradicate. I attacked with sharp weapons while plotting murder and mayhem. Perhaps its flowers are poisonous?

In my garden, I can expunge negativity, be it what’s in the news or thoughts of bad people doing bad things to the innocent. It’s also where my left brain kicks in. While planting a tidy row of annuals, my peripheral mind nudges me about scheduling conflicts, too many characters whose names start with B, and did her eye color change between chapters ten and twenty?

Better ask my pathologist friend to skim the morgue scene for accuracy. Yes, I will fight for my beloved adverbs! And my dear editors—have I thanked them lately for tolerating my idiosyncrasies?

Ultimately, like typing ### on page 300, the killing frost comes, enabling me to put books and gardens to bed for the winter. In February the snowdrops will peek through the snow, and creativity will emerge, refreshed, in the garden.

HALLIE: I use my garden, too, but to get AWAY from writing. (Like laundry...) And while the same problem bangs around in my head unsolved in the office, miraculously as I'm outside sweating and pulling weeds, solutions emerge.

(Nancy, I hope in comments you'll tell me how to vanquish trumpet vine. Please.)

Writing is like... how would you complete the analogy.

ABOUT VANISHED

It was supposed to be the kidnappers’ last job, snatching the infant of a poor single mother for an unsuspecting wealthy client. But the kidnappers grab the wrong baby—Billy, the son of high-profile bankers, Kingsley and Todd Henning—from their employer’s secure daycare. Realizing their mistake, the kidnappers plant evidence to implicate the parents and dismantle their operation. No ransom call comes. Detectives, convinced the parents are guilty, interrogate relentlessly as they uncover planted evidence.

The parents can’t face the mosaic of guilt, blame, and despair or help each other. On day ten, they are called to the morgue. The deceased is not Billy—this time. Shaken, they recommit to each other and vow to find him themselves. They scrutinize the bank’s security footage for incongruities only insiders might spot and follow the flimsiest clues into the murderous underworld of illegal adoptions. As novice detectives, they are exposed to extreme danger, skirting the law while keeping one step ahead of the villains and the police.

But is it too late? Will the kidnappers eliminate all trace of the baby? Or are they no match for two angry, determined parents?

-->

Much to-do in the Garden

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: It's hard to believe, after the winter we've had, but I think spring has finally arrived here in New England. The dun brown lawn is starting to green up, and the narcissus are poking through the earth. We even have a few crocuses in one of the back beds. 

There are other plants emerging, which is where I run into my problem. Are they day lillys? Irises? Weeds? I don't know. The garden - and I use garden in the English sense here, because saying "property" sounds too grand - was my late husband's bailiwick. He spent hours out-of-doors every day during the summer, doing God-knows-what. (Some of it was definitely having a beer on the stone patio, which he laid.) My part was that of faithful handmaiden. I am good at pruning, weeding when the weeds are identified for me, raking and hauling a wheelbarrow around. The rest of what makes the perennial flowerbeds look good, and the blueberries, raspberries and grapes produce, is a mystery.

I have made up the following list of what I know needs to be done: 1) Pick up sticks. Between a succession of blizzards and several windstorms, the front and side yards are littered with everything from minuscule twigs to branches bigger around than my arm.2) Cut back the forsythia. We have quite a lot, and it's a yearly fight to keep it from overwhelming the side yard.

3) Lay down tarps over the Japanese Knotweed before it starts growing. We've been slooooly pushing this invasive plant back over the past several years, but like the forsythia, you need to keep on top of it. There are several spots where I can't tarp over; those I'll pull up by hand as they emerge. 4) Rake out the flowerbeds. I think? We have several circular beds in the back with a mix of spring bulbs, day lillys, nicotiana and wildflowers like Indian paint brush and Queen Anne's Lace. The latter dries and falls over during the winter, so now everything looks like it's covered with straw. I get rid of that, right?

5) Later in May, when the last frost has passed, I need to get annuals for the front porch flowerbed. No idea what's going to go in there. Should it be mostly one color? A mix? Tall to short from back to front? Clearly, I need something like a paint-by-numbers guide, except with plants instead of paints.

So Reds, how about you? How are you getting the garden ready for spring? Planning anything new this season? And what would you suggest I put on my to-do list for outdoors?

DEBORAH CROMBIE: It has been so cold here! I know you northerners are laughing at me, but normally we can put in tender plants by mid-March. Not this year! I finally planted my veggie buckets last Thursday, but am still having to cover them when it drops down into the 40s. And I have loads and loads of other stuff that has to be potted, impatiens and begonias and herbs, and a new David Austin rose--Gertrude Jekyll (a connection to the book-in-progress)-- that will have to go into the flowerbed. I'll have my yard guy help with that, but otherwise it's all me. Gardening in NOT Rick's thing...

Julia, are you doing veggies? I'm doing a garden in 5 gallon paint buckets. I got the idea from Lucy, actually from her tomatoes planted in buckets on her balcony in Key West. I have about 14 buckets with one plant each, on the south side of the house, but I can move them around if it actually gets too hot as the summer moves on. I'll let everyone know how it turns out.

JULIA: No veggies this year, Debs - I'm opting for a CSA share from my friends at Bumbleroot Farm. All the fresh taste, none of the weding.

INGRID THOFT: I live in a high rise in downtown Seattle and don’t have any personal outdoor space, which suits me just fine.  When we lived in Massachusetts, we had a yard and a pool, both of which required a lot of upkeep.  We enjoyed it at the time—I especially liked planting my containers each spring—but honestly?  We don’t miss the work.  I like to think of Pike Place Market as my garden:  The tulips arrived a few weeks ago.  The citrus is waning, and the mangoes are delicious.  The changing of seasons is evident by the bounties on display, and I don’t get dirt under my fingernails!

HALLIE EPHRON: Gardening gloves!

Everything here is sooo late. The forsythia has finally bloomed and the quince is about to burst. Our Japanese andromeda is lush. We're having our first 50+ degree day just about since the fall. And I have two cheery pots of pansies bobbing their heads on the patio. Thx, Home Depot.

We've had a profusion of wildlife. Tons of birds and squirrels. A magnificent red fox and a powerful coyote whom we'd like to introduce to a pair of bunny rabbits, but they keep missing each another. It's a good thing those bunnies are cute, because otherwise they'd be extinct.

And of course the ants are back. Inside.

RHYS BOWEN: Alas, we live on a steep hill, surrounded by deer and jack-rabbits, AND we are away in Europe for much of the summer. So gardening is restricted to pulling weeds, picking lemons at the right time of year and smelling the lavender and rosemary which are the only things the deer won't eat. We do, however, make up for it with a lovely view and I plant annuals in pots on my deck when I am home....and dream of an English cottage garden!

JENN McKINLAY: Gardening is AZ is pretty much done for the season. My peach and plum trees will come to fruition in late May/early June and then we just slog through the summer to get to the other side, watering our sunflower patch for the rogue lovebirds in our neighborhood to chow on in August. If I want pumpkins for Oct, I need to plant them in July. 

Anything else we want to plant has to be down in February for a May harvest. I haven't done that since the Hooligans were youngsters. They loved digging in the garden, playing (and naming) the earthworms and the lady bugs. Now we have desert landscaping in the front of the house with pungent creosote, sage, and rosemary bushes. And the backyard is mostly lawn for the dogs with fruit trees and some yellow bells and plumbago thrown in for color. I love to be outside and I have loads of container plants on the patio that keep me busy without having the huge garden we used to maintain. 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: What a crazy year! This time last year, my tulips looked  like this. 

I know exactly when they bloom, because I always wind up at Malice when they are at peak. Not this year! Yikes!  They peeked up their first little shoots and zapped themselves right back underground. The crocuses  braved the cold and emerged, and flourished, but we re only just now getting the buds of daffodils and tulips. You can't even tell the colors yet. No lilacs, no forsythia, no magnolias.

I am girding for battle with the tulip-eating squirrels. I feel like Yosemite Sam, poised with a shotgun. We had them planted with chicken grit, something like that, that supposedly hurts the squirrels' paws when they try to dig up the bulbs. I put cayenne powder on the buds so it tastes terrible. and there's rat blood, too , that keeps them away.  Grrrr.

I dug up last years geraniums and put them in pots and kept them inside over the winter--they did fine, so we shall see when I can put them out.
And if I put out pots of pansies, they would instantly freeze to death.

JULIA: Rat's blood?!? I don't even want to know how you laid hold of that, Hank. How about you, dear readers? What are you doing for the onset of spring? Or, like Jenn, are you already done until fall? And what do you think I should be doing out there?

I had some lovely pictures of spring (including Hank's tulips!) but Blogger doesn't seem to like me today, and is not letting me post them. I'll try again later! 

Summer: A Few of my Favorite Things @lucyburdette

LUCY BURDETTE: Wow, it's been one crazy season since May, rocketing from family to food to friends to family. Here are a few of my favorite things so far--and then I'd love to hear about yours!

1. Old friends are the best friends! Is there anything better than reconnecting with people who knew you a million years ago and still love you in spite of your quirks? Nancy Parent was my absolute best pal in high school--we shared lovesick yearnings and terrible poetry. I met up with Yvonne and Wendy at Motown the Musical to reprise goofiness from grad school days....






2.  Writing pals are the gravy with my biscuits. So happy to share a booksigning with Barbara Ross and Liz Mugavero, and to help celebrate Hallie's new book You'll Never Know, Dear with Hank...

3. The garden has been amazing this summer (thanks to John, who is winning the battle of the woodchucks and weeding like a champion!) Here's our best crop so far....

4. I've been cooking a lot of Cuban food to go along with my Key West food critic mystery #8, coming next summer. Here's the best thing I've made: Mojito cake, flavored with rum, lime, and mint...recipe to follow later...

5. Best silly moment: With our favorite babies in residence, there has been plenty of silliness. I thought the first picture might capture my favorite (with great-nephew Lewis), but then our son Andrew showed me the wonders of Snapchat...

6.  Best Sport of the season: When I mentioned to John that we were attending a pirate-themed wedding and that I'd ordered him a costume, he didn't bat an eyelash. "Argggg!" he said. (As his sister suggested, maybe too much time in Key West has sent him over to the dark side...)

7. Best Innovative Work-around: Can there be anything more fun than watching a baby figure things out that we take for granted? Dorothea is the poster child for diving in if you really want something. We could all use a little of her gumption! 

How's your summer going so far? Tell us a highlight!