3.5*
A decent cozy mystery. I wonder if the author has ever really been short of money though - her main character Paula is supposedly barely making ends meet but she can afford massages & manicures? ( )

I'm more than 20 books behind posting on Goodreads, so borrowing synopsis from Amazon:
Meet Paula Holliday, a transplanted media exec who trades her stilettos for garden clogs when she makes the move from the big city to the suburbs to start a gardening business. Paula can handle deer, slugs and the occasional human pest - but she's not prepared for the mummified body she finds while restoring the gardens at Halcyon, a local landmark.

Casual snooping turns serious when a body is impaled on a garden tool and one of Paula's friends is arrested for the crime.

Paula was fun, and so were her friends. The author obviously knows her gardening, but it wasn't crammed down the reader's throat. I do have the next in the series, the Big Dirt Nap, on my to-get list. The book DOES need some editing, and I kept catching some of the clever statements being made repeatedly. There are so many readers that would just love to edit in exchange for a free copy.. don't understand why authors don't take advantage of that. ( )

A decent cozy mystery. I wonder if the author has ever really been short of money though - her main character Paula is supposedly barely making ends meet but she can afford massages & manicures? ( )

A cozy murder mystery.Paula Holliday traded her stiletto's for garden clogs when she moved from the big city to the suburbs Where she started a gardening business. She can handle anything from Deer to garden slugs but she isn't prepared for the mummified body she finds when she is restoring the gardens at Haleyon the local land mark. Casual snooping turns serious when a body is found impaled on a garden tool and one of her friends is arrested for the crime. A fun read i look forward to reading the next book in the series The big dirt nap. ( )

A Blooming Good Mystery Debut: Rosemary Harris' debut mystery, Pushing Up Daisies, introduces a gutsy heroine with an offbeat supporting cast. The first in the Dirt-y Business Mystery is a blooming success.

Paula Holliday is a gardner with a small landscaping business in Connecticut. Her business is struggling, and Paula spends a great deal of time hanging out in the Paradise Diner, owned by her friend, the outspoken "Babe" Chinnery. When the last member of the Peacock family dies, Paula's time spent at the Springfield Historical Society lands her the job of landscaping the family estate, Halcyon. It's just an accident when she digs up a body on her first day on the job.

Paula, a single woman in her thirties, with a dry sense of humor, pushes Sergeant Mike O'Malley to investigate a murder that could be forty years old. Can Paula weed out the killer in a story of past scandals? It takes some help from a retired cop, Paula's friend, Lucy, and the Mexican landscaping community.

Harris has a solid grasp on gardening details that will please many readers. For those of us without any knowledge of gardening, she supplies a well-constructed mystery with likable characters. Here's hoping the "Dirt-y Business Mystery" series flourishes.