title: The Unlikely Lavender Queen: A Memoir of Unexpected Blossoming
author:  Jeannie Ralston 
description: Arriving in Manhattan for a <i>McCall's</i> magazine summer internship when she was 21, Ralston was smitten with big-city life. Soon she had the career of her dreams, a Chelsea apartment, even a film student fianc. Then, on a feature assignment for <i>Life</i>, she met Robb, a photographer for <i>National Geographic</i>, and her life was up-ended. Before long, Ralston was leaving her boyfriend and New York City, to move with Robb to his home state of Texas. They settled first in Austin, but Robb wanted a less urban lifestyle, so they bought land with a creek and an old stone barn in the Texas Hill Country. Robb's busy schedule of international photo shoots left Ralston in charge of house renovations, hardly her forte. Then Robb had his next ideathey'd raise lavender on their limestone-rich land, which was similar to the soil of Provence. Ralston agreed, provided they start having children. Together, they began a successful niche-industry, growing and processing lavender into a variety of marketable products. In this satisfying and enjoyable story, the reluctant Ralston eventually falls in love with their fields of lavender. <i>(May)</i> <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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  # Anne of Avonlea
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Lucy Maud Montgomery
  
  
  
      
  
  
  
  
  
  to
  
  
  my former teacher
  
  
  HATTIE GORDON SMITH
  
  
  in grateful remembrance of her
  
  
  sympathy and encouragement
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Flowers spring to blossom where she walks
  
  
  The careful ways of duty,
  
  
  Our hard, stiff lines of life with her
  
  
  Are flowing curves of beauty.
  
  
  -WHITTIER
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ###  I. An Irate Neighbor
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  A tall, slim girl, "half-past sixteen," with serious gray eyes and hair
  
  
  which her friends called auburn, had sat down on the broad red sandstone
  
  
  doorstep of a Prince Edward Island farmhouse one ripe afternoon in August,
  
  
  firmly resolved to construe so many lines of Virgil.
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  But an August afternoon, with blue hazes scarfing the harvest slopes,
  
  
  little winds whispering elfishly in the poplars, and a dancing slendor
  
  
  of red poppies outflaming against the dark coppice of young firs in a
  
  
  corner of the cherry orcha