Giveaway winners, Delphiniums revisited & a Muesli puzzle!

Published: Mon, 05/11/20

Hello everybody! I hope you're all staying safe and healthy. Thank you for the many, many lovely messages following my last newsletter. I was so touched by your words of support, understanding and encouragement. Please forgive me for not being able to reply to you all personally, but I wanted to tell you that I read and appreciated every single email.

I'm counting the days now until the release of TROWEL AND ERROR - the 4th book in my English Cottage Garden Mysteries:

"Autumn has arrived, with crisp, cold mornings, dew on the grass and hedgerows full of blackberries... When budding garden sleuth Poppy is invited to a party in a beautiful orangery, the last thing she expects is to witness a lethal wasp attack! As authorities investigate the possibility of murder, Poppy is horrified when local handyman Joe Fabbri, her friend and mentor, becomes the main suspect. Determined to prove Joe's innocence, Poppy sets out to solve the case - with help from her "mad scientist" neighbour, his new robotic invention, and a particularly stinky mushroom! Meanwhile, Poppy is also learning that gardening isn't just sunshine and roses. As she grapples with wind, rain, and unpleasant autumn chores, she wonders if she's bitten off more than she can chew. With limited horticultural experience and a long winter ahead, can she really make a success of the cottage garden nursery that she's inherited?
As Oren, the talkative ginger cat, lends a paw, and crime author Nick Forrest helps her dig for clues, Poppy makes a startling discovery: could there be a link between the murder victim and her long-lost father? Would solving this case also give her answers to the biggest mystery from her past?"

Amazon | Amazon UK

***

I'm sure you're all keen to find out the winners of the giveaway from my last newsletter!

To celebrate the upcoming new release, I'm giving away 5 sets of the first three books in the series (winner's choice of ebook or paperback format).

And winners are...

1) K Seiler

2) S Cordery

3) "Susan" CF

4) M Roberts

5) M Courtney

My assistant, Erin, will contact you via email with details of how to claim your prize. If you don't hear from her by Friday, please drop her a line on: assistant@hyhanna.com

And if you didn't win this time, don't worry! I'll be running another fabulous giveaway soon! :-)

Muesli says "Congratulations!" to all the winners

Image - Me & Muesli practising social distancing!

Do you remember my delphinium seedlings?

Like Poppy, the heroine in my English Cottage Garden mysteries, I am a relatively new gardener and I've been trying to create my own little cottage garden here in Western Australia. It's a bit of a tall order as most of the plants normally found in a traditional English garden really struggle in the hot, dry climate of Australia!

But I've been persevering and with a lot of time, effort and trial & error (not to mention water!!), I've finally managed to create the garden full of flowers that I've always dreamt of.

One iconic cottage garden plant that I LOVE but have never had much luck growing is the delphinium. I think they are absolutely gorgeous and always sigh wistfully over pictures of the tall, elegant spires in gardens back in England.

Whenever I buy potted delphiniums from the nursery, they've promptly died when planted out in the garden. So last winter, I decided to try growing them from seeds instead. Perhaps if the seedlings "grow up" in the harsher climate of my garden, they will adapt better...?

Well, I started with 50 seedlings and sadly, only about half a dozen have made it but I'm thrilled to tell you that some of them flowered last week! YES!

OK, they're not quite the thick, tall spires of billowing blooms, over 2 metres tall, that you'd find in the UK - mine barely reach a metre, are very spindly and the flowers are a bit small & sparse, but still... it's a start!! :-)

I have to admit: growing delphinums in Perth is not for the faint-hearted ;-) They need really rich, moist soil (we have water-repellent, poor sandy soil); they need sunny but cool weather (we have nuclear sunshine that fries everything in its path and temperatures over 40C/104F for months); they need consistent water but also rot easily if too wet (we either have drought-like summer weather or heavy rainstorms all winter)...

So yes, it's been a massive uphill battle. But I've always enjoyed a challenge ;-) I've just ordered some more seeds and am going to try again with a new batch of seedlings!

(For those of you who have read my English Cottage Garden Mysteries - does this sound familiar? Haha! In this case, it's not so much life imitating art as life inspiring art! ;-) )

Well, I hope you're all keeping well. I'll drop you a line again next week when the new book is out!

(Don't forget, you can still pre-order it at the moment with the $1 discount off the release price: Amazon | Amazon UK)

Now, since you're all mystery lovers, I'll leave you with a little puzzle to solve: this photo of Muesli gives a clue to a storyline in the upcoming release that's inspired by real life... can you guess what it is? ;-)

Thanks for reading - talk soon!

Hsin-Yi
(H.Y. Hanna)

Website: www.hyhanna.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/hyhanna.books

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