These are plants that are salt-tolerant, drought-tolerant and attractive. So I'll be teaching what each of them looks like and suggesting how to combine them in a landscape.

When temperatures fluctuate, it's really hard on outdoor plants. The warm weather promotes growth and activity and then when the temperatures drop dramatically at night, the tree could suffer winter injury.

There's so much negative information in the media. If the building of bridges and roads and schools and power plants was portrayed in the media, it would make a huge difference. We need to stand by our men and women so they can keep their morale up.

After her sister's visit, Marthe's head was brimming with new pictures: the fields of lavender at Valensole, all the subtle grades of blue and purple; the way twilight melted them all into one; the precise hues of the liquid distilled from each plant, the shape and color of the bottles, and a new understanding of the surroundings where she was learning her craft. Just as plant variations were bred together to crete new hybrids- like the lavandin from the delicate wild lavender- this was what she did with the descriptions her sister had supplied; she grafted them on to the sights she remembered from childhood and reinvigorated them.

Michael and I met through music. We were fixed up on a blind date. . . . I was teaching in New York, and Michael [who plays piano] had finished medical school and was working in San Francisco. He flew in to meet me and proposed seven hours later.

Scrubby evergreen bushes released a strong scent of resin and honey; forests of pine gave way to gentle south-facing vineyards disturbed only by the ululation of early summer cicadas. Sitting up tall on the seat, she craned around eagerly to see what plants thrived naturally.
It was a wild and romantic place, Laurent de Fayols had written, the whole island once bought as a wedding gift to his wife by a man who had made his fortune in the silver mines of Mexico. One of three small specks in the Mediterranean known as the Golden Isles, after the oranges, lemons, and grapefruit that glowed like lamps in their citrus groves.
There were few reference works in English that offered information beyond superficial facts about the island, and those she had managed to find were old. The best had been published in 1880, by a journalist called Adolphe Smith. Ellie had been struck by the loveliness of his "description of the most Southern Point of the French Riviera":


'The island is divided into seven ranges of small hills, and in the numerous valleys thus created are walks sheltered from every wind, where the umbrella pines throw their deep shade over the path and mingle their balsamic odor with the scent of the thyme, myrtle and the tamarisk.