I lost both of my mothers this winter. ■ The passing of Mum (my Scottish mother) and Mom (my American mother-in-law) left great holes in my soul. Mom, an exquisitely tailored bird of a woman with twinkling blue eyes, collected antiques, painted portraits, wrote poetry and managed her stock portfolios till shortly before her death at 101. We would joke that a ride in her car around Treasure Island, Florida, was like experiencing “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride”—a refer- ence from The Wind in the Willows, the classic book that provided this company’s name, Dulce Domum. ■ Mum was a gardener. In Scotland, her grounds were a riot of roses and sweet peas, and for edibles she favored tomatoes and rhubarb. I followed the seasons from her phone calls: “My crocuses and snowdrops are out” was typical in early spring; “I took the geraniums in this week” heralded the beginning of winter. ■ For 30 years, she spent her summers in the U.S. reorganizing our gardens. She would start by walking around, tut-tutting at poor placement here and overcrowding there. Then she’d head off to the nursery, where she often laughed at the plants for sale: “Marianne, at home we call these weeds!” ■ One year she arrived with her friend Bett Scullion, and they decided to plant pachysandra under the trees and along the pathways of my old house. Ten years later, as I was downsizing, the pachysandra stretched like a dark green carpet as far as the eye could see. I couldn’t leave it. So some of the plants were dug up and transplanted to my new home in Silvermine. ■ This week I realized that a new green carpet now covers the hillside down to the waterfall, stretching the length of the old stone walls and completely sur- rounding the house, as if wrapping me in its soft, vibrant strength. The holes are filling in.