I feel as if I'm making a confession to you all. I always loved gardens but my folks never had much money or knew anything about plants so we had the ugliest, deadest yard on the block. I always hated that. My Dads mom had a beautiful garden and my moms mom grew a few rose bushes and a big loquat tree and my moms dad grew strawberries and tomatoes. My folks bought a house with clay soil and made a half hearted attempt at planting some unsuitable shrubs then promptly gave up. Everything died but the couple of pines and the Italian cypresses. My dad's folks garden was the magic place and I adored it. I always loved the prettiest yards on the street and I would stop and look at all the different plants on the way home from school. In particular I was in love with a Japanese couple's dicondra lawn surrounded by maples and bamboo and clipped things. They were out there almost every night working on it together. I can still remember them on their hands and knees pulling little weeds from the dicondra and talking to each other in Japanese. The azaleas were so beautiful and there must have been so many other treasures that I can't recall now. In my mind it was the best a garden could ever get. So then the years went by and I got a copy of the Sunset Western Garden Book in high school and I read that book over and over and learned the latin names and began to really look at plants in a new way. I got an understanding of plants and what they like and that different plants want different things and that it isn't just magic that some people have and some don't. I started making an herb garden out in the no mans land of the front yard. Then I started growing annual flowers from seeds and working them in all the while waging war with bermuda grass that threatened to ruin all my progress. I planted seeds mostly because I was spending all my money to go to college but sometimes I splurged and bought fuschias and any other flowers that hummingbirds liked. I soon had a big fuschia collection going in the back under dads big pine tree that managed to survive the early years. I hated my job in the women's clothes section of a department store so I found another one at a local nursery run by a Japanese couple and their son. This couple was so good to me and the hours I spent sitting by Sumi learning about flowers and just being in her gentle presence changed the way I looked at the world and about flowers. She had a great wisdom and kindness. I don't think I'll ever know such a graceful and gentle person like that ever again. Sumi's brother Ken was there too and he was a wonderful man with a gentle way and great sense of humor. I wish I could go back and tell them how much I appreciate all the kindness they gave to me. I loved them and I loved the nursery and every plant in the place. I just wanted it all to grow well and for everyone who got a plant to be happy. I listened to all the growers and customers and I read everything I could read. Then came my friend Robert who knew everything about plants and loved roses. After a trip to his garden I wanted to grow roses. I thought I didn't know much after meeting Robert, but he was also very kind and wise and didn't mind my inexperience. He was also a great enabler and got me started buying roses from RoY&T. That catalog was like candy to us and we talked about it on lunch and while we were planting up flower baskets for holidays. When bare root rose season came around, Robert was always so happy. We loved getting into the big boxes of bareroots when they would arrive. After a while, I thought my humble herb patch was nothing special and started expanding. I left them all to go to the University and then I got a job at Disneyland Entertainment that ate my life. I spent many many hours during and after hours in the park and got to watch all the plantings and talk to the people in charge of landscape for the parks and the hotel complex. All that time, my garden saw me through tough times and I faithfully got up to water it before dawn when I had to go to work early or get to school and study. All along the way I met people who loved plants and I took cuttings and collected seeds to grow in my own garden. My grandma stood by me all the way, encouraging me. I loved Lord of the Rings too and Narnia. I remember when my sister and I were young and went camping in Colorado. We walked out into a meadow and I said " If I see the tents of Narnia, I'm just going to keep going" and she agreed with me that we wouldn't go back. I try to put a bit of fairyland in the yard for kids that come by and for myself to remind me of the old days.

Oh, my, I'd forgotten all about Girl of the Limberlost! And the Little House books held a great deal of fascination for me - I liked the "grow-your-own", simple life feel of them. And then there's Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass - wouldn't it be great to have a chess board garden with topiary chess pieces? From Through the LG, the Garden of Live Flowers: "O Tiger-lily," said Alice, addressing herself to one that was waving gracefully about in the wind, "I wish you could talk!" "We can talk," said the Tiger-lily: "when there's anybody worth talking to." Alice was so astonished that she couldn't speak for a minute: it quite seemed to take her breath away. At length, as the Tiger-lily only went waving about, she spoke again, in a timid voice -- almost in a whisper. "And can all the flowers talk?" "As well as you can," said the Tiger-lily. "And a great deal louder." Isn't that the truth. Wendy

Ach! To think that I didn't mention Scout Finch (from my all-time favorite book) or Jane Eyre...I am slipping. Anne Elliot, Caddie Woodlawn: Rosefolly, you and I read a lot of the same books. I didn't learn to appreciate Anne Elliot until much later, though. And Judy Bolton! Many girl readers thought Nancy Drew was the heroine to follow through however-many-beaucoup mysteries she solved. She was blonde; had an adoring father, a blue roadster, and an ever-ready boyfriend; and she never aged. Good gravy, but I think I realized, even as an adolescent, that Nancy was unreal. Judy Bolton, on the other hand, could solve mysteries, and she grew up, changed, and even got married. She was a multi-faceted, real character in a way that Nancy never was and never would be. Rosefolly, like you, for a while I wanted to be Judy. Hmmm, ladyrose, Caroline Meeber is an interesting choice. It's been too long since I last read Sister Carrie, so about all I can recall of her is that she made Scarlett O'Hara seem like a rank amateur in the collecting of men. Scarlett, after all, married three times; Carrie dispensed with marriage. Maybe it was the ending of Sister Carrie that left me feeling a little out of sorts with its protagonist -- she came to the conclusion that art was preferable to materialism; but by that time she was so doggone jaded and I was too! What have I forgotten about Carrie, ladyrose?

Whilst I was on holiday, I did get quality reading done on the beach (thought I'd slip that in there!). The fiction books that I picked up and read were a couple by Mildred Walker (an author from Minnesota in mid-century), the first one called "Winter Wheat" (a prairie bildungsroman novel) and the second (which was a better read) which was "The Southwest Corner" about an older woman who lives in Vermont and who is trying to decide how she should live her days out. Reminiscent of "Stone Angel" but with a much more likeable protagonist. And then, NF was a thought-provoking tough read called "Methland" by Nick Reding - it addresses how small town rural America was hit hard by the meth epidemic and then traces the strands involved in the meth industry. Fascinating for the most part, and I learned a great deal about lobbyists, Big Pharma, drug cartels and how to make meth. :-) Then I just finished up a book about twins - fascinating (to me) as I'm an identical twin and am always curious how other twins handle things. Also, a well written scientific journalism book at the same time, covering topics as far ranging as epigenetics (how environment can affect your genes for generations) to parenting twins and people who think they had a twin in utero but who wasn't born and they miss them. Lots to think about. The beach was fab, btw.