Rosefiend Cordell (aka Melinda R. Cordell) has been a municipal horticulturist, and has worked as a greenhouse manager, a perennials czar, a landscaper laborer, and a landscape designer through her career, and she ran a public rose garden with over 300 roses (mostly antique roses). Now she writes books (it's easier on the back) about what she's learned over the years in gardening. The maple that she's posing with in her author photo is one she planted in the parks system in the late 1990s. Good times! Rosefiend Cordell is her gardening book pen name; she writes epic fantasy with dragons under her real name (you can read those as well, hint hint).