My gardens tend toward shade plants with one exception, a pot that sits on the one consistently sunny point of our deck. That pot is planted with geraniums.

Always geraniums. They like sun. They’re easy. They’re pretty. When the geraniums are planted, I feel as though the summer can really begin.

Over the years, I’ve tried various techniques for overwintering the plants without success.

Last fall, the pink flowers were so pretty, I decided to try again. I moved the geraniums into the basement and charged my husband with watering them every once in a while as he walks by on his way to his office.

Apparently giving the task to him was the way to keep the plants alive. Not only alive, but actively growing all winter. The leaves became so large he thought some strange volunteer plant had invaded. He was only convinced otherwise when the plant began to shoot out flower stalks and set blooms.

The fact that these plants prospered over the winter feels like a good omen to me.

The cover of my new novel Go Away Home features geraniums on a window sill. When I shared the cover on Facebook, many commented that they liked the cover because of the geraniums: their grandmothers always had geraniums and they think about times past when they see that flower.

Now that it’s warming up, I’m about to move the geraniums back out to the deck. In July, my book will make its public appearance.

It seems like serendipity, doesn’t it, that my geranium plant made it through the winter and that geraniums are on my book cover?