Winter is over and spring is finally here. So if you’re in the mood for an adventure in the great outdoors after emerging from hibernation (and who isn’t?), perhaps something affordable and close to home that will delight and possibly inspire you, listen up.
Thanks to the mentoring of the aunt who raised her, Kinsley Clark has achieved her dream of owning a landscape design company in Harborside, Maine, at the young age of twenty-eight. Seascapes landscaping was even featured in Coastal Living magazine, and Kinsey is hoping that her Aunt Tilly’s Salty Breeze Inn will achieve similar success with their third participation in the Walk Inns annual parade of homes. So when Kinsley digs up a sequined shoe on The Salty Breeze Inn grounds, she only briefly hesitates before covering it up again.
“An oasis we can be proud of,” neighbor and longtime Clovis City Councilmember Drew Bessinger on describing the essence of the Clovis Botanical Garden. “I can walk out of my back fence and find it along the trail in about three minutes.” What a jewel for Clovis!
Maybe they are the blues, and maybe they are the "blah”s. Whatever you call them, there is something about a let-down, a bit of cold, fog cover, and January itself that make the Central Valley the least attractive time of year for many. I almost shunned the opportunity to move here twenty-seven years ago because I came to explore in the mid-winter, specifically, January.
Poppy Lancaster can easily attest to the idea that “green thumbs” may be more a result of experience than DNA. She applies her best efforts perusing her late grandmother’s plant books to educate herself and make a success of the business she inherited, but she continues to be faced with so many challenges trying to bring Hollyhock Cottage Garden & Nursery back to its former glory.
Sixty-something widow Lilly Jayne not only has a “squad” of friends and family to keep her busy, she has the greenest, green thumbs when it comes to her meticulous garden. She is participating in the annual Garden Sculpture and Lights event and creating a wreath based on random book titles for the library fundraiser; hers is based on the Christie classic, “Murder on the Orient Express.” All good fun…mostly. She is also relied on by law enforcement when suspicious deaths pop up...and they always do!
The Von Tresslers were not normal members of the small Pennsylvanian community. With their wealth and attitude, they essentially kept themselves separated from the townspeople shunning invitations to join in, participate, or patronize local businesses along with poaching all the contractors in the area to build their mansion on the hill no matter to what projects they had already committed.
Poppy’s “slimy” cousin Hubert Leach, a property agent, has been a bittersweet part in her life, but she thought the “quid pro quo” agreement she’d made would turn out to be simple and easy to fulfill. He had given Nell a lucrative cleaning contract, and Poppy promised a return “favor,” and being his date at an invitation-only cocktail party seemed a small price to pay. Until the “quo” was more than her “quid” could handle.
On April 22nd, people around the world will celebrate Earth Day. It’s a time for appreciation, gratitude and, more importantly, progress. Whether you’ve volunteered in years past or you want to get in on the action now, there’s a ton of ways to give back. Some of these you can do during lockdown, and others you can do when life gets back to normal.
What would make one quit their job? Demanding boss. Personal rebukes. Docking pay. Poppy Lancaster acquiesces desperately needing her paycheck, but when the last straw comes, quitting is the only solution. A prophetic chance meeting and gift of a papier-mâché, sprig-of-heather pin (Heather symbolizes transformative change—from the mundane to the extraordinary) heralds changes.
