My grandmother was known to have a saying for about any situation. One of the many I heard as a child was “The cobbler’s kids never have shoes.” Once I figured out what a cobbler was, that saying started to make sense to me. Maybe it was a painter working on Grandma’s dining room and talking about how his wife had wanted her own kitchen painted, or the carpenter fixing her steps and talking about the bookshelf he hoped to build for his kids....

This past weekend, I tackled a garden project that I’ve been putting off for years. I dug up all the irises in front of our house, and moved them to an entirely new area, which I’m hoping will now become “The Iris Bed.” When we first moved into this house, I admit I went a little crazy with my flowers. I have always loved English cottage gardens, and I wanted a garden surrounding my house that was all flowers, full of blooms at all times of the...

In my many years editing for Carolina Gardener and reading various gardening publications, I became very familiar with the extension agents’ favorite saying: “Right Plant, Right Place.” Basically this means you want to understand the environmental needs of a plant before you put it in the ground. You don’t take a sun-loving zinnia and plant it in the woods, just like you wouldn’t put the shade-loving heuchera out in an open garden with full...

It might just be because we are more aware of things with the advent of Facebook and social media, or it might be my age, but it seems like many of my friends have been dealing with the loss of a grandparent. Often, it is the last living grandparent, and one they are very close to. I experienced this myself a couple of years ago, when my Grandma Milholland suffered a stroke and passed away shortly before Christmas that year. It is hard to lose...

On the second day of kindergarten, my oldest child (and first I had sent to “big school”) looked at me and said, “You don’t need to walk me in today.” I can still clearly see in my mind, like it was yesterday, that little girl with her backpack on walking confidently into the door of the school, while I watched as long as I could from car line. That independent spirit and confidence is something I’m very proud of in Caroline, and it’s still...

Garden clubs were something I always associated with my grandmother. So maybe it’s only fitting that one of the first things I did as a new member of the Yadkin Valley Garden Club was to take a field trip to Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden, a place Grandma and I visited together 15 years ago. They held a media day, and as an eager young editorial assistant at Carolina Gardener, I jumped at the chance to go tour and take advantage of my press...