Homegrown and Handpicked: A Year in a Gardening Life (2018)

Awarded Second Place for Nonfiction Books for Adults—Humor by the Woman’s Press Club of Indiana, 2019 Communications Contest

“Professionally dirty clothes,” “The MulchMobile,” “The Gardener’s Handshake,” “Thanksgiving Conversation Starters for Gardeners,” and  “Going Steady with a Grower” are just a few of the delightful subjects covered in Homegrown and Handpicked: A Year in a Gardening Life.

Read it to discover if you have an eccentric gardener in your neighborhood or to see if, gasp, you are the eccentric gardener in your neighborhood.

The sequel to the popular essay book, Potted and Pruned: Living a Gardening Life, which taught us about gardening math, distance, time, and other important fundamentals, Homegrown and Handpicked is a journey through the seasons, with just as many laugh-out-loud, hey-that’s-me stories as the first book.

Read to remember why you love gardening, and keep returning to your garden again and again, despite the bugs, weeds, and marauding garden fairies running off with your tools.

“A wonderful follow up to Carol Michel’s first book of gardening humor! Filled with vignettes, gardening tips, letters, advice, and more; this little collection is pure fun. Just as with here first collection, this book inspires the reader to get out there and start gardening, right this second! It’s cute and inspiring; and reading it at this time of year (spring) makes me want to do even more in my yard. I can’t wait to get my hand on the third book in this trilogy, if anything like the first two it’s going to be amazing :)”  – Erin Cataldi, Librarian