Lorette Lough considers herself "something of a gardener."

Whatever her skills out of doors, she is dynamite at the typewriter.

The Ellicott City author has written 71 books, with two more due out this year and eight more in the pipeline.

Her romantic-suspense novel Love Finds You In Paradise, Pennsylvania, has just hit book stores, and she is the author of the "Suddenly" series of books.

She has contributed essays to Chicken Soup for the Chocolate Lover's Soul and Chicken Soup for the Wine Lover's Soul, so it makes sense that she'd be on the short list of essayists asked to contribute to The Ultimate Gardener.

Her essay includes a brief history of gardening, but it also describes the joy she finds in gardening with her twin grandchildren.

"I try to keep them outside and active and gardening is a natural way to do that," she said in a telephone interview. "They get so excited over every little shoot, they act like they put a man on the moon.

"I love their excitement. We have lost that as grown-ups."

The book has some expert advice, but Lough says its appeal is the "Every Man" nature of the contributors.

"There are doctors, lawyers, housewives. Everybody gardens, it seems."