poppies, calendula and seed libraries (win seeds); a new series about aging (yup!)

I'm checking out seeds like mad in a lot of catalogs right now, but one company -- Hudson Valley Seed Library -- actually got its start a decade ago when its co-founder let people check out packets of seeds like they were books. Ken Greene tells us about seed libraries then and now; about the reddest lettuce and the cold-hardiest calendulas that might make "modern heirloom" status; and what we can sow earliest of all, including poppies (plus he shares his can-do coldframe plan). All here. 

And: Enter to win Seed Library membership and seeds, on me!  

dear old (love, older): letters on aging

We talk about it all the time, lately, between ourselves, and now my author friend Katrina Kenison and I are talking about the challenges (and joys!) of aging in a series of letters out loud, online. She's Old (just 55) and I'm Older (facing 60 this year). Who knows where it's going, but since the subject keeps coming up, and we're both writers...well, you get the idea. Listen in to our first letters back and forth (and maybe win a signed copy of her just-out paperback of "Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment."