My cell phone buzzed. It was the Realtor again. What will it be this time? Good news or bad? “Hi, Betty,” I answered, bracing myself for news of another fallen  …

I am an unabashed romantic, heart and soul. I find romance in certain locations—England, Italy, and France come to mind—in historical legends, and especially in gardens. And there is one  …

Every Fall in my part of Winnipeg, Manitoba, people peddle—by which I mean, try to give away—surplus crabapples. Judging by the zeal with which the bulging bags are foisted upon  …

Back when my oldest, Zach, now 11, was just a toddler, I decided I wanted to compost. At the time, we were living in Naperville, Illinois. Every weekend Zach and  …

It’s early October and my zinnias are ugly. Their stems have grown brown and brittle. Their curled-up leaves are mottled and mildewed. But I can’t say good-bye to the zinnias  …

One evening after supper, I grabbed an empty quart jar, slipped on my flip-flops, and drove down to my sister’s house to harvest some coreopsis seeds. Her car was not  …

When I moved in with Don, my One True Soulmate, in the mid-1990s, we both wanted to relandscape his normal-sized lot in suburban Palo Alto, California. We decided to tear  …

Just before the building permit was issued for our RV garage, my wife and I had an epiphany: the roof of the garage was going to be flat, get lots  …

I once lived in an iris-blue Queen Anne house that was bordered with 20 pink, yellow, and white roses, but that was another lifetime. When my husband died, I took  …

I grew up in Southern California during the 1950s. My father proudly built our square little bungalow alongside several others in a row on Moorpark Street in Los Angeles.  …