By MAUREEN GILMER, Scripps Howard News Service

When I purchased this odd, 1940s bungalow in Palm Springs, Calif., it was painted a stark white and sat amid a barren field of rocks and a few citrus trees. The entry looked like a glorified trailer. But as I began to work on the garden, the whole place changed. Today, just seven years later, it is a veritable oasis. The impact of coming through the front gate is profound.

Pueblo Indian pots start at $1,000 and can rise to six figures, according to "Antiques Roadshow" experts. I know I can never afford the real thing, but I can get the same look free or nearly free with gourds -- and the proof sits all over my budget-decorated home.

You don't really know lantana until you've seen it in a hot, frost-free climate. It's a colorful monster, growing increasingly vivid in the dead heat of summer. Temperatures over 110 degrees send it into overdrive, producing even more color when all else withers.

"Let's not pick that scab," my mother used to say when I would rehash some former conflict. But as a gardener, it's OK to get picky. So get out your clippers, sharpen your fingernails or devote a stout pair of scissors to the task. Whether you grow flowers or a kitchen garden, this is the season to pinch and pick and pluck to your heart's content.

In the natural world, the 21st day of June is an auspicious occasion. It is the summer solstice, once called "midsummer's day." The period of daylight is the longest of the year and the duration of night the shortest. The sun-worshiping ancients built Stonehenge to accurately identify this great dividing time.

My grandmother's name was Daisy, and Marguerites were her favorite flowers.

Do the leaves of your roses turn whitish and puckered? Perhaps your beautiful buds or even the flowers succumb to alien powder? These are symptoms of one of the most vexing diseases of roses, which is in fact a fungus. Known as powdery mildew, it has bedeviled rose growers since the earliest times.

I miss the old roses terribly.

Call me crazy, but I just love the smell of horse manure.
In fact, I've been up to my dark brown eyeballs in manure all my life.

Believe it or not, creating a first vegetable garden is like furnishing your house. For interiors you may go to showrooms filled with a vast array of brands, styles and sizes made by contemporary manufacturers. Or perhaps you spend your time perusing antique and second hand stores for vintage finds.