The Mysterious Garden Muse

Flowers are beautiful, but they are gone in an instant. Fall color is fantastic, but it’s gone when the leaves fall. Garden lovers – and landscape professionals – are always on a quest for the grail: plants with four seasons of interest. Hydrangeas may not be the perfect four season plant, but they come darn close. The problem is that when you say “hydrangea” most people think of the colorful flowers of the mophead-type hydrangea such as Hydrangea macrophylla, a species that does not perform reliably in Northern Illinois. An exciting new introduction, Endless Summer®, may be the first in a line of more hardy forms of this plant but for the most part there are four hydrangea species best suited to Midwestern landscapes. Climbing hydrangea (Hydrangea anomala spp. petiolaris) is an extremely ornamental woody plant. It takes about five years to mature but it is well worth the wait. Do not make the mistake of installing the young containerized plant next to a delicate wood or wrought...

This month at BN.com's Garden Book Club (which, like Mystery, is more of a chat room than a traditional book club), we are featuring HOME OUTSIDE: CREATING THE LANDSCAPE YOU LOVE by Julie Moir Messervy. Stop in to join the discussion! This is a great place to share your garden poetry, to talk about garden crafts, creepy-crawlies or whatever is on your mind related to gardening. We like to go off on tangents, and recent discussions have included: *how genealogy and gardening are related *funerals for lost plants *Flat Emma *the mysterious dying sunflower *how to get rid of poison ivy *invasive passion flower vines and much more!

Our featured authors for July are LISA UNGER, who was a featured author a year ago. She is back to talk about her new book, DIE FOR YOU. Acclaimed author JOHN CONNOLLY is visiting Mystery in July to coincide with the release of his latest book, THE LOVERS. Just a reminder that Barnes and Noble is working with PBS Masterpiece MYSTERY! to promote the new line-up! MASTERPIECE and BN.com give you access to experts connected to each of our programs. Post your questions and participate in the discussion. Mystery Scene Magazine editor and co-publisher Kate Stine for “Six by Agatha” will spend a week with us starting July 5, and if you sign up for the MASTERPIECE e-newsletter for program alerts (now available in HTML) at pbs.org/masterpiece, you can be entered to win a set of "Six by Agatha" books! Learn More About “Six by Agatha”: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/christie/index.html

One of my favorite trees died this spring. It's a 'Forest Pansy' redbud, a beautiful ornamental that's less hardy than the straight species. It can be iffy to grow in Chicago, but Cincinnati's winters aren't usually quite that extreme. A few years ago, my Forest Pansy split during a rough winter, and I thought I'd lost it. It came back. It has survived moderate flooding and extended droughts, coming back to brighten my early spring garden with its flowers and to take my breath away when the leaves emerged red-purple, before changing to green. Last winter was more severe than usual, and the Forest Pansy didn't survive. It was a really beautiful tree, and I'm going to miss it. Sorry that the pictures aren't great quality -- I wish now that I'd photographed it more often -- or had my husband take the pictures, since he's a better photographer. But this gives you the idea.

Click the title of this blog post to join us at BN.com's Mystery Book Club -- more of a chat room for lovers of mystery than a traditional book club. Authors visit regularly to talk about their books, and we invite you to tell us about your favorite reads, too. PBS MYSTERY! kicks off a new season in June, and we will be talking about the new episodes at BN.com. Upcoming Broadcasts – Mark Your Calendars! “Six by Agatha” – Sundays, June 21 to July 26, 2009 on PBS (check local listings) With grey cells firing and knitting needles clicking, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple make their triumphant return to PBS in “Six by Agatha,” a half dozen whodunits by the greatest mystery author of all time. David Suchet (Henry VIII, The Way We Live Now) reprises his signature role of the Belgian private eye who cracks cases with the help of his “little grey cells,” and award-winning actress Julia McKenzie (Cranford) debuts as the newest grandmotherly sleuth. Hercule Poirot: “Cat Among the Pigeons”—Sun...

Wendy Corsi Staub and Marshall Karp will be visiting the Mystery Book Club in June to discuss their books. Author Keith Gilman will be visiting on June 9, authors Kelli Stanley and Rebecca Cantrell will visit us on June 16 and we may have more surprise visits this month.

Our featured books for June are already generating some discussion. Join us!

A lifelong mystery fan, I can still remember the book that started me on this journey: The Secret of the Old Post Box.   Shortly after that I discovered Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, Cherry Ames, the Hardy Boys, Judy Bolton, Beverly Gray and then, ta da!, Agatha Christie.  Mary Stewart, Dorothy Eden and Evelyn Anthony led me to the more romantic mysteries and my current love of romantic suspense. I recently tracked down copies of these two early favorites.  They aren't quite as good as I remembered, but what memories of childhood are?

The raccoon comes to my deck every night.  He taps on the patio door and my cat goes out to play with him. The other picture is really old, from when I lived in England.  Benjie, our neutered male cat, thought he was the mother of our Dutch rabbits, Lennon and Thumper. 

Two of these pictures are weeds, but I still like them.  I keep part of my backyard wild, for this reason.

Pictures from my yard: spring has sprung!

Some pictures from my yard.