Zanthan Gardens
Weblog of a Central Austin Garden

AJM came in upset from his morning ritual of greeting the goldfish. “There’s a toad or something caught in the bird-netting and I think it’s dead.” I went to check and so it was. The poor thing had gotten its nose stuck in the netting and its own weight held just its nose under water and it drowned.

Last night a second maker of ribbets joined the bullfrog. And then there was a distinctively different croak. Was it this frog? A Rio Grande leopard frog, Rana berlandieri perhaps. This one was large, (although I don’t know how frogs are measured), at least 4 inches from nose to anus not counting the legs.

This is not the first time the bird-netting has caught something unintended. Durn raccoons. If it weren’t for the raccoons, I wouldn’t put the netting over the pond. If I take it off, then I chance waking to dead goldfish tomorrow. Is what differentiates humans from other animals the fact that all our interventions are fraught with anxiety? Or is that just a phenomenon of us city-bred moderns, we squeamish ones, who are out of touch with death?

Julie @ Human Flower Project passed along poppy seeds which finally started blooming this week. (Everyone else’s in Austin bloomed throughout April.) She said the double-selection was salmon. In soft early morning light it looked more dusty rose; in glaring afternoon light, definitely salmon. (These two photos are of the same flower taken about six hours apart.)

My love-in-a-mist, Nigella damascena had almost died out so, thinking I had enough blue flowers, I planted some ‘Mulberry Rose’ seeds from Renee’s Garden. The cilantro overgrew them and when I was clearing it out yesterday, I discovered these miniature nigella flowers, about the size of a dime, on teeny-tiny plants. (Seed packet: mature height 18-24 inches). Apparently they prefer room to grow.

On the opposite end of the scale, the unwieldy crinum (maybe Crinum bulbispermum) continue to flower. These large bulbs don’t like being moved and have taken about three years to settle in and start blooming.

The pink rainlilies, Zephryanthes grandiflora opened all at once today. A single early flower opened on April 28th–but today is really rainlily day.

Robin Chotzinoff flattered me in her story on garden blogging, comparing my compulsion for note-taking and record-keeping to Thomas Jefferson’s. I mentioned he was one of my garden heroes and inspirations. I wish I were even half as thorough in my records as he.

Luckily for us, he did not ever fulfill his resolution to entirely abolish pen and paper from his farm. Quite the contrary. He wrote in his garden and farm books whenever he was at home. I’m betting that if Thomas Jefferson were alive today he would be a garden blogger. He was curious about everything, passionate about gardening, and loved sharing what he knew and learning from others.

New varieties of plants thrilled him; his garden motto seems to be “Discovery”. The Americas were, after all, a whole new world of plants. Before sending Meriwether Lewis on the famous expedition he sent him to Philadelphia for nine months to study botany. In contrast to our century, where we keep lists of plants that have gone extinct under our stewardship, Jefferson was adding plants through discovery or hybridization. “The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture,” writes our third president and author of the Declaration of Independence.

Using the technology of his time, he wrote a copious number letters swapping knowledge and always begging seeds, bulbs and plants to try. “Your favor of the 7th came duly to hand and the plant you are so good as to propose to send me will be thankfully recd. The little Mimosa Julibrisin you were so kind to send me last year is flourishing.” he writes William Hamilton from Washington in 1806. In this same letter he lays out his plans for farm improvements when his term as president is over. “…my views and attentions are all turned homewards.” he prefaces several long paragraphs on his plans for farms when he gets home, concluding with, “…the subject runs away with me whenever I get on it.”

He is aware of the social obligation of his written connections. Correspondence, like blogging, establishes a relationship, one that must be kept up by both writer and reader. “In matters of correspondence as well as money, you must never be in debt.”

Doesn’t it humanize these great historical figures to know that in 1796 Thomas Jefferson wrote to George Washington saying, “I put away this disgusting dish of old fragments & talk to you of my peas & clover.” He then goes on in great detail talking about how many tons per acre of wheat he has grown, how tall the stalks are, how his older fields are exhausted, his plans for crop rotation, and how he’s built a Scotch threshing machine from a model someone sent him. He modified the plan to more easily move it from field to field.

In his travels to Europe, Jefferson is fascinated by farm methods and plant choices. He stops to ask a man why he is gathering ferns in the forest. When he hears the reply (he uses dry ferns to pack apples for market, as they don’t give off a scent as hay does), Jefferson can hardly wait to get home to try it himself. Americans have just recently gotten on the olive oil bandwagon, but Jefferson was promoting the olive in 1787.

“The Olive tree is the least known in America, and yet the most worthy of being known. Of all the gifts of heaven to man, it is next to the most precious, if it be not the most precious. Perhaps it may claim a preference even to bread; because there is such an infinitude of vegetables which it renders a proper and comfortable nourishment. In passing the Alps at the Col de Tende, where they are mere masses of rock, wherever there happens to be a little soil, there are a number of olive trees and a village supported by them. Take away these trees and the same ground in corn would not support a single family.”

Thomas Jefferson kept a garden book, primarily a calendar, from 1766 to 1824. Over the years his garden book became more detailed and exacting: records on the weather, on what he planted, on when he harvested, drawings laying out the garden beds. He noted the migration of birds and the dates of first flowers. Some of his notes read like tweets.

1811 Mar 16. planted 5. Tuckahoe grey cherries in the rows e-1-2-+1.4.5 from Enniscorthy
1811 Mar 18. planted Asparagus seed in beds 5.6.7. & replanted 3.4
1811 Apr 13. Quarantine corn from Thouin in the old Nursery.
1811 May 16. strawberries come to table.
1821 May 28. artichokes come to table. The last dish is July 28.

Jefferson had one of those minds that is never satisfied, a mind that is never still but constantly reaching for a more efficient way to do things. His farm books are filled with ideas and advice that he’s collected over the years and organized by topic as well as detailed farm management records. He records the progress on grading roads, writing down the number of people working and how much road they make each day and figuring the yards per day per hand progress. (Much slower going in the woods and uphill.)

And he is not content to read about an idea. He experiments, observes and records. Is it more efficient to use candles or oil lamps, he wonders and sets an experiment burning both a lamp and candles for 16 1/2 hours to see how much fuel is used.

…it appears that 1. gallon of oil will burn 402. hours, and that it requires 10 3/5 lb of candle to burn the same time so supposing oil to be .75 per gallon, it will be equal to mould candles at 7. cents per lb which shews the advantage of oil.

In 1793, when Eli Whitney writes to Jefferson about his little invention, the cotton gin, Jefferson immediately wants to know how he can employ it on his farm.

“…I feel considerable interest in the success of your invention for family use. Permit me therefore to ask information from you on these points. Has the machine been thoroughly tried in the ginning of cotton or is it as yet but a machine of theory? What quantity of cotton has it cleaned on an average of several days, & worked by hand, & by how many hands? What will be the cost of one of them made to be worked by hand?”

I love that phrase, “as yet but a machine of theory.” Apparently they had problems with vaporware even in Jefferson’s day.

One of my favorite letters is to Jacob Bigelow in 1818. Here Jefferson summarizes seven years of his observations that characterize the climate of Virginia. He includes average temperature and rainfall for each month, date of first frost (Oct 7-26), when the peach trees blossom (Mar 9-Apr 4), when the house martins appear, and the ticks! (both mid-Mar), when the lilacs bloom (Apr 1-28) and the fireflies appear (May 8). He also records that it is necessary to have fires at all times for four months in winter, and in the mornings and evening for another month before and after.

Do I know how many days of the year I run my heater, all day long versus only at night? How about the AC? How many nights did we have a hard freeze this last winter? Was that typical or less than average? Have I tried different fertilizers on my tomatoes to compare them and see which is the most efficient? How about different methods for tying and staking tomatoes? Is there a good reason that Austinites shouldn’t set out tomatoes before March 15th? What if they are in protected site? What if we use row covers?

How much advice do we take on faith without testing it ourselves? And how rigorous are our tests? Do we just follow advice without also growing a control to use as a comparison? Do we write down our observations and then compare our notes over several years and with others? How much practical and useful information are we collecting and sharing? How much of what we’ve learned through experience will be lost if we don’t pool our knowledge? Jefferson is an inspiration for seeking continual/continuous improvement.

Time to update my In Bloom Calendar for April.

Imagining the bog garden is a much easier when we get a month’s worth of rain in about 15 minutes. Even without any roof runoff the holes I’ve been digging to collect water fill quickly. The water overflows into the lawn and is slowed temporarily by the berm before rushing around it and flooding the garage.

Note to self: dig deeper holes.

This morning’s downpour was intense. I cringe to see all that precious water running off. My rainbarrels were already full from the rain the other day.

Note to self: get bigger rainbarrels.

My rain-catching terraces are having some effect in slowing down the runoff. The amount of rain pouring off the place where the roof forms a valley by the front door looked like someone had opened a fire hydrant. I think it would have overwhelmed any guttering system. Must check to see how VBDB’s new rainwater collection system handled this storm.

If you are stopping by for the first time because of the Statesman article on garden blogging, it’s nice to have you. Don’t be shy about joining the conversation. Bloggers love getting comments. If you are interested in reading about other Austin gardens, check out the links in my sidebar or the latest comprehensive list at Pam/Digging. Austin has more garden bloggers than any other city in the world!

While here, you can explore the archives by category: read the history of my garden both outside and online, check out what’s happening Week by Week, Month by Month, or my latest garden project gone bad. Although I like to try new plants, for some reason the post I receive most comments on is the one on Indian hawthorn–a plant I despise and ripped out of my yard.

Our motto here is research, research, research and then trial by error. Lots of error. If we learn best from our mistakes, I’m on the path to genius. The best thing about garden blogging is that we get to compare notes with other gardeners, people who understand our obsessions, encourage us through our losses, and cheer us on in our successes.

I’m becoming more and more fascinated by people who make gardens–that is, in contrast to people like me, who merely grow flowers (and the occasional vegetable where sunlight permits).

I just realized that most of the gardens I’ve visited are private English estate gardens turned public, Hidcote Manor, Arley Hall, Tatton Park or civic gardens such as the instructive Springs Preserve in Las Vegas or the Japanese garden in San Francisco.

Japanese Garden, San Francisco

These are gardens of extraordinary effort: to design, finance, construct, and maintain. As much as I love visiting these gardens, I don’t find lessons I can immediately apply to my garden. (The basic lessons in design are there, of course, but the scale of the gardens is such that it inhibits rather than inspires my creative urges.) I look at grand gardens the same way I do houses in Architectural Digest, admiringly yet outside my purview, beyond the range of possibility. I could never do something like that.

Yesterday I had the chance to visit the gardens of ordinary people. And when I say ordinary I do not mean it as a slight but as a compliment. Tremendous personal effort and vision went into each of the gardens I visited. My point is that these are personal not civic efforts. These private gardens were made by individuals, not teams of hired gardeners, by “plain folks” who transformed their typical city or suburban lots into extraordinary places. And just as encouraging, these gardens were built right here in Central Texas, gardens that suffer the same challenges of climate, drought, flood and scorching summers punctuated by thunderstorms, high winds, and hail as my own.

In short, these gardens excited and inspired me because they teemed with possibility. Maybe I could do something like that.

The tour was sponsored by the Travis County Master Gardeners Association and focused on sustainable gardening. The point we were supposed to take away, I think, is that sustainable gardening does not mean sacrificing pleasing design, beauty, or creativity.

Link’s Garden

Link’s garden is the closest to my own geographically in laid back south Austin. I’m guessing that most people will remember it as the “found objects” garden–an amazing collection of the mundane and the discarded reclaimed as garden art.

What’s a south Austin garden without painted tire planters? The unique touch is the cymbals on rebar sculpture.

What impressed me most was the creative use of space, the amount of garden packed into a tiny lot on a steep hillside. At the top of this narrow winding path, there is a deck with two chairs that look over the garden. The fence to keep you from stumbling over the edge is made from old seatless wooden chairs painted bright colors.

Rusting lawnmower as artistic statement in a garden where all the lawn has been torn out. And if you can’t grow barrel cactus in your climate, what about turbine fans?

Mary and Clark’s Garden

Mary and Clark’s garden astonishes on many levels. First it’s plopped right in the middle of bland suburbia…

…and stands out from its neighbors with an aggressively planted front yard herb and butterfly garden.

Mary and Clark have a completely lawn free yard. The house is topped with solar panels, they harvest rainwater, and have a huge compost pile. Way to go suburbia!

The length of back fence, a short fence providing little privacy with large bushes on the neighbor’s side seems like an impossible place to grow anything interesting. And yet roses bloom in what seems like too much shade and fruit trees line the path.

The garden celebrates edibles, providing food for the family with excess shared with neighbors and donated to charity. In addition to the all-season vegetable garden, Mary grows olive and apple trees and has harvested grapefruit from a tree grown from a seed. None of these trees are typically grown in Austin, which demonstrates that sometimes I need to break the rules and take more chances in my garden.

Walt’s Garden

Inviting entry. The garden is enclosed in the back away from the ravages of deer.

Walt’s garden, Serenity, is a collector’s garden. His plant list numbers over 300 and most of them are shade plants…just the kind of inspiration I need. Although he has lived in the house for over 20 years, building the stonework retaining walls and pathways really began when he retired in 2001. He terraced the entire hillside by hand, mixing concrete in a wheel barrow. He said that he was strongly influenced by Japanese gardens and it shows. Rather than relying on the flashy color of annual flowers for interest, Walt focuses on the textures and shades of green. The variety in Walt’s garden comes from the sheer number of different plants in his vast collection.

Lesson learned: I should stop complaining about my shade and do something with it.

Serene green refuge from an Austin summer.

Jenny and David’s Garden

Taken as a whole, Jenny and David’s garden borders outside the range of my potential. I can’t imagine a huge walled garden on my lot no matter how much I’d love to have one. However, if I could have any garden in the world, this is probably the garden I would want. It is the perfect blend of my mother’s New Mexican adobe house dreams and AJM’s mother’s English cottage garden. And it feels familiar because I love and I grow many of the same plants.

Because Jenny and David’s garden is divided into smaller rooms, it never overwhelms or seems inaccessible. Each room has such a friendly atmosphere that I can imagine just sitting and being almost anywhere here.

I took AJM to see the paving stone courtyard…David poured the concrete pavers himself. “See. We could do something like that.” I nudge AJM, encouragingly. “Couldn’t we?”

Dateline: 2008-04-18

Did I move ‘Champagne Elegance’ as I chided myself to do in 2004? Why is my record-keeping so inconsistent? No, I chopped out the oregano instead. I had already moved her to the east square of the front lawn, a sunny spot where my plan was to plant roses and irises so that I could keep all the demanding plants together. The nearby Texas mountain laurel and oleander grew so quickly that this planned sunny spot was completely in the shade last year. So go my plans. As do my dreams of hundreds of irises multiplying exponentially.

Still ‘Champagne Elegance’ struggles on. Last year, Austin got twice as much rainfall in the summer as normal and I lost many bearded irises to rot. Only one rhizome of ‘Champagne Elegance’ survived. It produced three babies, each of which sent up a stalk and began flowering yesterday. Six small flowers in all. This is not a very impressive showing in the realm of tall beard iris fanciers but it pleases me.

Aren’t there certain flowers in your garden that make you run out when you spot them and whoop for joy? “Look! There’s ‘Champagne Elegance’ again’,” I insist, showing anyone who will stop and look.
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Maybe that isn’t headline news but I continue to be overwhelmed by the sweetness and generosity of all the people I met at Spring Fling. Today, I opened my door to this incredible present from Robin @ Bumblebee. A dozen of the most luscious chocolate-covered strawberries you can imagine.

And so many people brought lovely little pressies with them, so unexpected and dear. Kathy @ Cold Climate Gardening gave me the coolest gardener’s key chain. VBDB @ Playin’ Outside made lemon ginger jam and shared her recipe. Elizabeth @ Gardening While Intoxicated presented a copy of her Buffalo Garden Walk book. Dawn @ Suburban Wildlife Garden, Vertie @ Vert and Nancy @ Nancy’s Garden Spot all shared seeds. Pam @ Digging surprised me with notecards made from photos of her garden. Carol @ May Dreams Gardens took me to lunch. Annie @ The Transplantable Rose had me and Carol to dinner and shared her signature cookie (and sent a bunch home with me to give to AJM who decided I must be friends with Annie forever just to keep those cookies coming.) And Dee @ Red Dirt Ramblings has some surprise in the works.

Actually it’s all a surprise. I never expected anything from Spring Fling except the chance to meet up with some of the people I’ve corresponded online with for many years. It was my pleasure to have you all. I’m so touched and overwhelmed by your generosity. I can’t really express myself very well…so I hope you just know. Thank you for coming to Austin. Thank you for visiting my garden and writing about it and taking photos. And thank you for making Spring Fling an experience so unimaginably delightful. Never in my wildest dreams…

Carol at May Dreams Gardens invites us to tell her what’s blooming in our gardens on the 15th of each month.

April 15, 2008

This period between last GBBD and this is generally the most perfect at Zanthan Gardens. This year the weather has played along. After scaring us with a couple of 90 degree days, (which caused the cilantro and baby blue eyes to go suddenly to seed), this week temperatures have fallen to gorgeous 70 degree days, the skies are clear, and the air is dry. Very dry. I’m having to water more than usual.

This period is either second spring or first summer. (For a part of the country reputed not to even have four seasons, I find that just four is not enough to describe the changes in the garden.) The trees have leafed out. What lawn is left is greening up. The early spring bulbs and flowering trees are finished. The over-wintering annuals are in full bloom. Self-sown summer annuals like clammy weed, cypress vine, Dolichos lablab, and cosmos are sprouting. They remind me that it’s past time for planting a few new summer seeds of my own.

New for April

Arguably Zanthan Garden’s most floriferous month, April is when the sheer mass of flowers overcomes interest in the individual specimen. I won’t even try to photograph all the new flowers for April. Here are a few.

Confederate jasmine

I have a weakness for all those heavily-scented white, Southern flowers but my favorite is Confederate jasmine. The scent is very spicy and the vine always a glossy green even in our worst droughts. You can smell Confederate jasmine from quite a distance.

Crinums with Engelmann Daisy and Pink Evening Primrose

The milk and wine lilies in the meadow with the gray-green foliage bloom before the crinums with the bright green foliage. I don’t know what kind they are. All of them have different colored flowers, sickly sweet, and huge, the weight of which causes the stalks to fall over almost immediately as the flowers open. I gathered quite a few seeds from these last year which started easily but have been slow to grow.

St Joseph’s Lily

The hardy amaryllis, Hippeastrum x johnsonii, has been blooming almost all month in my yard and all over my older Austin neighborhood. I’ve never liked any photo I’ve taken of St. Joseph’s lily but Rachel @ In Bloom got the color right when she visited during Spring Fling.

Jerusalem sage and California poppies

The Jerusalem sage, Phlomis lanata, is dead easy to propagate. Just stick a semi hard-wood cutting into the ground, keep moist but not too wet, and it will root. I love the leaves but they get a bit wilty when temperatures top 90.

Red Yucca

Last winter I had a couple of invasive chinaberry trees removed. The red yucca, Hesperaloe parviflora, once again in sunlight, has thanked me by blooming this year. The individual flowers are insignficant. In Austin, red yucca is commonly massed and the flowers hover like a pale red cloud above the spiky plants.

Retama

Also known as Jerusalem thorn or palo verde, this lime green tree flowers bright yellow and is covered in thorns. Given my penchant for growing thorny plants, maybe I should have named my garden “Thornfield”.

White Stonecrop

Here’s a little flower that gets lost in April’s showiness. Getting down on my hands and knees I spot the small flowers of white stonecrop, Sedum album. I don’t have any idea when these started blooming.

And also new for April…

• Allium neapolitanum
• Aloe barbadensis
• Asparagus densiflorus ‘Sprengeri’
• Centaurea cyanus ‘Black Magic’
• Duranta erecta
• Engelmann daisy Engelmannia peristenia/pinnatifida
• iris (heirloom yellow)
• Hippeastrum x johnsonii
• Lantana x hybrida ‘New Gold’
• Lathyrus odoratus ‘Perfume Delight’
• Mirabilis jalapa
• Nerium oleander ‘Turner’s Shari D.’ (next to New Dawn).
• Nigella damascena
• Oenothera speciosa
• Polanisia dodecandra (clammy weed)
• rose ‘New Dawn’
• rose ‘Prosperity’
• rose ‘Red Cascade’
• Verbena canadensis (a boring lavender wilding)

Between GBBDs

Several flower bloomed and faded in my garden between GBBDs and so didn’t show up in the inventory for either March or April.

• Hyacinthoides hispanica
• Tulipa clusiana
• Yaupon holly

Complete List for April

• Allium neapolitanum
• Aloe barbadensis
• Asparagus densiflorus ‘Sprengeri’
• Centaurea cyanus ‘Black Magic’
• Commelinantia anomala
• Consolida ambigua
• Crinum (various)
• Duranta erecta
• Engelmannia peristenia/pinnatifida
• Eschscholzia californica ‘Mikado’ (going to seed)
• iris (heirloom gold)
• Hesperaloe parviflora
• Hippeastrum x johnsonii
• Lantana montevidensis
• Lantana x hybrida ‘New Gold’
• Lathyrus odoratus ‘Perfume Delight’
• Lavandula heterophylla ‘Goodwin Creek’ (few flowers on old plants)
• Lupinus texensis (mostly going to seed; first plant now flowering since 12/15)
• Mirabilis jalapa
• Nemophila insignis (going to seed)
• Nerium oleander ‘Turner’s Shari D.’
• Nigella damascena
• Oenothera speciosa
• Oxalis crassipis (hot pink, full bloom)
• Oxalis pes-caprae ‘Scotty’s Surprise’ (fading)
• Oxalis triangularis (only purple, not white)
• Polanisia dodecandra
• Phlomis lanata
• Retama
• Rhaphiolepis indica (end of the season)
• rose ‘Blush Noisette (full bloom)
• rose ‘Ducher’ (waning)
• rose ‘Madame Alfred Carriere’ (one flower)
• rose ‘New Dawn’
• rose ‘Prosperity’ (full bloom)
• rose ‘Red Cascade’ (two small flowers)
• rose ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’ (one flower, between flushes)
• Sedum album
• Setcresea (both purple and green)
• Trachelospermum jasminoides
• Tradescantia (spiderwort, going to seed)
• Verbena canadensis (lavender wilding)
• Viola cornuta ‘Sorbet Coconut Duet’

Update: Winner Announced

Congratulations to Dianna Otterstad of Lewisville, TX who won a copy of Nightshade in the drawing.

Today I’m happy to welcome author Susan Wittig Albert. As I read her latest China Bayles’ mystery, Nightshade, I was thrilled to discover that several scenes are set quite near Zanthan Gardens and in other Austin locales quite familiar to me. Now I’m expecting to see China around every corner. I did have the pleasure of meeting Susan during last weekend’s Spring Fling–which just goes to show, that in the world of gardening and mysteries, you never know what might happen next. — mss

In Search of China’s Father: A Book-Bridging Story

Many thanks to MSS for hosting me today at Zanthan Gardens. This blog tour celebrates the launch of Nightshade, the latest China Bayles mystery. For those of you who haven’t met her, China is a former criminal defense attorney who left the rat race and moved to Pecan Springs TX, a small town at the eastern edge of the Hill Country, halfway between Austin and San Antonio. There, she owns an herb shop and tends her gardens, when she isn’t solving mysteries. One of the mysteries she’s compelled to solve arises out of her own past, out of her father’s death, some sixteen years ago.

(Spoiler alert: this post contains some information that is part of the mystery—but only some. There’s still plenty of mystery left for you to solve.)

China’s Past, China’s Present

Real people have a past—that’s one of the things that make them so interesting. Writers know that their fictional characters need a past, as well: to give them depth and substantiality, to make their present actions understandable, and to hold the reader’s interest. As a series writer (mysteries are usually written in series), I’ve loved having the opportunity to let my characters’ pasts come to light gradually—not all at once, and not all in one book, but bit by bit, as their present situation summons up the memories of the past.

China Bayles tells us a bit about her past in almost every book. In Thyme of Death, we learn that her father, Robert Bayles, a successful Houston lawyer, influenced her decision to go to law school and become an attorney. She did it to “get his attention,” she says, “to please him.” But nothing China did could ever please Bayles, a cold, remote man who had little time for his daughter or his alcoholic wife.

A bit of my own personal history here: China’s relationship with her father was modeled on my own troubled relationship with my father, a stern, distant man who inspired me alternately with adoration, as a girl, and fear, as a teen and as his alcoholism grew worse. I struggled with my feelings for him for years, even after he died. Writing about China’s relationship with her father has helped me see mine more clearly.

As the series moves along, we begin to understand that China’s inability to trust men arises in part from her unhappy, untrusting relationship with her father. In Bleeding Hearts, more of the backstory emerges. We find out that when China was in her teens, she had a weekend and summer job in Bayles’ law office, where she met the partners, her father’s secretary, Laura Danforth, and Danforth’s son Buddy. We learn how her father died, in a fiery car crash sixteen years before the present. And we discover that Laura Danforth was her father’s mistress, and Buddy—now a practicing attorney, introduced by his real name, Miles—is her father’s son. This back story plays out as one of the mysteries of the book, as China meets Buddy. At the end of the book, Miles gives her a batch of letters Robert Bayles wrote to his mother, letters that cast China’s father in an entirely new light.

In Spanish Dagger, more details of China’s father’s story emerge. We discover that Laura Danforth did not believe that the car crash that killed Bob Bayles was accidental, and that she was still trying to solve the mystery when she died. Miles, her son, is carrying on that search and wants to involve China, who is not at all anxious to get dragged into a past that she finds altogether unpleasant. But in Nightshade, China has to get involved, when the search for the facts behind her father’s death comes home to haunt her. What happens in this mystery is going to change China’s life completely, in ways she can’t begin to understand—not yet.

In Search of China’s Father: A Book-Bridging Story

The story of China’s father was so complex that I didn’t want to try to tell it and solve its mysteries all in one book. Instead, I chose to develop it across three books: a trilogy within the series. The story is introduced as a subplot in Bleeding Hearts, when China meets her half-brother and learns about her father’s illicit affair with Laura Danforth. It continues and is expanded (but is still a subplot) in Spanish Dagger, as China finds out more details about Danforth’s investigation into Robert Bayles’ death. It becomes the central plot in Nightshade, where all the mysteries are finally resolved.

I love writing mysteries because they’re written in a series and a series offers so many possibilities for character development and extended story-telling. I could never have told the whole story of China’s relationship with her father and her discovery of the truth behind his death in a single book. It would have been far too complicated, and important parts of it could not have been developed.

I realize that I’m taking a chance doing this. Some readers may be irritated at not having every loose end tied up in the final chapter, as is usually done in a mystery. And a reader who begins the series with the second or third book in the trilogy may have some catching-up to do. But the story itself was too rich to compress and too important to ignore. So here it is, complete at last—that is, as much as a story can be completed. As I said, what happens in Nightshade is going to alter China’s life in some very important ways. How? Well, gosh. We’ll just have to wait for the next book or two, I guess.

Susan’s Blog Tour

Want to read the other posts in Susan’s blog tour? You’ll find a calendar and links here.

Thanks again to Zanthan Gardens for hosting me today. And thanks to all the readers who are following this blog tour through cyberspace. If you have questions or thoughts to share, post a comment. I’ll be around all day, and tomorrow and the next, to reply to your comments. — Susan

My pleasure, Susan. — mss