Cathy Maloney, senior editor of Chicagoland Gardening, spoke to a group at the Chicago Botanic Garden on Saturday, March 14, a cold and sunny day. Walking around the back of the Regenstein Building, I saw my first aconites in bloom. Their bright yellow cheered me up. I was pretty down on myself, thinking why can't I write a book like Cathy did?

Here's why - her book, Chicago Gardens: The Early History 1833-1933, is a scholarly, original, well researched book she was working on during the 10 years I have known her, plus 10 more years before I met her. She became interested in the subject through an interest in family gardens "without computers or internet" for research when she was writing.

Cathy spoke for over an hour with slides, and without once referring to notes, to a fairly large group of interested adults, none quite of the time period of the book but some pretty close. It's a dense text, buy it for reference.

I went home and looked for my aconites.

—Adele Kleine