A rose by any other name is a strawberry, raspberry, blackberry and boysenberry. All being members of the Rosaceae (Rose) family, these luscious berries are as delectable in flavor as the rose is in fragrance. And, just like their floral cousins, these berries require a patient gardener and specific care to help guarantee a fruitful future.

Hundreds of Napa gardeners turned out March 29 for the first-ever Get Growing! festival, presented by the local University of California Master Gardeners program.

Gummy blobs on peach trees, dead branches in giant sequoias, dieback and oozing bark on Italian buckthorns, dead bark on olives and flowering locusts. These are all tree health problems I’ve seen in the past couple of years, and they all have something in common.

I’m sentimental about lilies. Every year at Easter, my dad gave my mom a beautiful potted lily. I still remember the wonderful fragrance and elegant beauty of those long-ago gifts.

Sow bugs and earwigs … good bugs or bad?