Amazon.com Widgets Riding down the highway, from Tennessee to North Carolina, listening to the car tires hum against the pavement, I finished our Garden Bloggers' Book Club selection for April/May. Halfway into it, I sent up a prayer of gratitude for Ann L. Armstrong and Lindie Wilson, who worked so hard to bring us another work of Elizabeth Lawrence. Together, they poured over and discussed 720 columns that Miss Lawrence wrote for the Charlotte Oberserver and included the most relevant 132. I'm also grateful to Carol of May Dreams Gardens for creating the Garden Bloggers' Book Club. Otherwise, I might never have read Beautiful at All Seasons because I didn't know it existed. Previously, I read A Southern Garden and Through the Garden Gate also by Lawrence, so I was familiar with her intelligent and accessible writing style. Garden Gate was the first compilation of Lawrence's columns edited by her...

Our second stop (the first was Graceland, and you don't want to know) on the Red Dirt vacation was Biltmore, the palatial estate created by George Washington Vanderbilt II, and still owned by members of the Vanderbilt family, located in Asheville, NC. The only word which comes to mind is amazing. Could you call this sumptuous house and grounds home? Would you want to? This was our second visit, and it didn't disappoint. The Red Dirt kids were duly impressed as we drove in through the wooded acreage, and the house burst into view. While we drove, we heard the strangest whirring sound, like our car was having trouble. We stopped, shut off the engine and listened. The whirring continued. It sounded like the Martians had landed in a 50s "B" movie. I looked for a flying saucer floating in for a landing. The sound made my skin crawl. At...

Before leaving on vacation, most people prepare by getting someone to pick up their paper, feed their dog or cat, and get the mail. Before we leave, I am always in a panic because I need someone to watch the garden too. If I had my choice, I'd only travel during the months between November and February. However, this philosophy doesn't coincide with school. Over the years, we've tried an automatic watering system which worked with my soaker hoses. After that first summer, it quit, and we never replaced it. Opening all of the zones at the same time didn't work well because the hoses watered at different rates with older hoses being more full of sediment and slower. Lucky for me, this year, our nephew, C., has offered to house sit and watch over my baby plants. As I led him through the garden yesterday, he seemed to think...

I probably wouldn't grow any David Austin roses. My fingers hate typing these words, but it's true. My six or seven David Austins are more trouble than they're worth. If they get disease protection and lots of food, they bloom heavily in the spring and then, nothing . . . until fall. It's a little like exercise after forty. You have to do it, but there's not much to show for your effort. If I built a new bed, I would fill it with nutrient rich soil and hardy (USDA Zone 6 or colder) disease resistant roses; the kind I don't have to hover over like an anxious mother nursing her child through a bout of Scarlet Fever. Think of The Velveteen Rabbit. Instead, I would choose plants that thrive on baby bird care. You feed them in the spring and then shove them out of the nest after a...