Kate Flora: Since the years are slipping away ever faster and travel is wearing, my husband and I declared that 2026 would be the year of travel. While I hate the term “bucket list,” we do have places we want to visit, and so the travel has begun.

For the past two weeks, we’ve been traveling around merry old England. First staying at our favorite hotel in London, The Chesterfield in Mayfair. Then we took a train up to Oxford to join a friend for a little jaunt through some charming Cotswold villages. For me, an avid (if not particularly skilled) gardener, part of the trip involved a visit to Hidcote gardens, which are lovely.

As we moved from what felt like little garden rooms created by tall, groomed hedges, I was constantly thinking about what ideas for plant arrangements I might bring home and include in my own gardens. The trouble is, as was very obvious, I don’t have a large staff of gardeners or a generous budget for plants. Still, I was reminded that my habit of buying single plants doesn’t work as well as when plants are massed. I particularly like plants with distinctive foliage. Bright yellow greens. Variegated leaves of cream and green, or deep purple foliage. I also love flowers, lots and lots of flowers. It would be fair to say that my gardening style is somewhat controlled chaos.

We then returned to London to see a play, dine at a private club, and then we and two friends piled into a car and drove to another part of the Cotswolds. We visited more gardens. Ate two tasting menus, one from a Michelin-starred chef, (three-hour dinners, anyone?) and stayed at elegant country houses.

For our last two days, one of the party wanted to see Dartmoor, so we did that. The route to our fancy inn was terrifying…down those barely one-lane roads bounded by hedgerows that concealed menacing stone walls. Not the sort of place you’d want to drive at night. Of course, being a crime writer, I pictured wild chases on those narrow, twisty roads. It’s natural, I think, when a place has grounds, to imagine where one might place a body. And who, among the very formal staff, has dark secrets. Who will be the victim and who will be the killer? Will I place the body in the bluebell wood?

You can take the writer out of the country and expose her to another culture, but the imagination never stays home.

We flew home on Sunday, a journey that, by itself, has left us both in need of a few days to recover. We always travel with carryon suitcases, which means, for two weeks, that they are heavy. When we went to board the plane, instead of a jetway, there were three flights of stairs down to a bus waiting on the tarmac, and then a very long, scary flight of stairs from the bus to the plane. Never mind how difficult it is to reach the overhead bins to stow the darned suitcase. Ready to depart, we were delayed when they discovered that the stairs refused to detach from the plane. As the pilot said, “We’ve got a bunch of engineers down there trying to figure out what to do.”

Reentry meant coming home to gardens that have tripled in size, and weeds that are lush and healthy. It also means the perpetual dilemma: garden or write? For the next few weeks, between library gigs, I’ll be trying to balance the two.

A reminder, someone who leaves a comment on a post this month will win a bundle of books.