And the Winner is...

The hardest part about conducting a contest is drawing just one winner. This must seriously depress the lottery folks. After the hoopla of someone winning 80 million, looking at all those crestfallen faces and spent scratch-off cards sort of takes the air out of the ol' balloon.

I do have a winner to announce: the winner of the Seedy Characters drawing is:

Andrea Ingala
from North Attleboro, MA

My mom picked Andrea's name from the big ol' floppy hat, and she'll be receiving a free, signed hardback copy of SECRET KEEPERS, along with a number of my favorite seeds--including Amaranth "Love-Lies-Bleeding." Congrats, Andrea.

For all those who entered the Seedy Characters contest--from Pennsylvania, to California; from Georgia and the Carolinas, to Texas and Minnesota and Oregon... from all over the land...THANK YOU. I wish I could send each of you a consolation prize. Some big, lush beautiful plant-- like a huge Angel Trumpet--or some heirloom tomatoes. Or SECRET KEEPERS: the home version board game. Like on the old gameshows-- Matchgame and Password.

I will be having more contests, though. And I hope you'll enter. Hope you'll find SECRET KEEPERS a great read, too.