Ann Ripley's charming and savvy series starring the irrepressible Louise Eldridge has delighted mystery and gardening fans alike--and this time the horticultural expert and reluctant sleuth tangles with a new and even more dangerous plot of quick-growing lies, betrayal, and murder. What could be more enjoyable for Louise than a weekend in Connecticut with her family, filming a garden tour for her popular television show, Gardening with Nature? The historic Litchfield Falls Inn is idyllic, and the tour will feature the famous Sacred Blood iris.  Everything seems perfect--until, there amid the verbena and love-in-a-mist, Louise finds a rampant overgrowth of the human species. Among an uneasy group of guests are a pair of unhappy yuppie newlyweds; a fragile, flower-crazy poetess; a widow suspected of murder; a bankrupt heir to the innkeeper's fortune; and the dashing, prominent botanist who developed the controversial Sacred Blood iris.  Most of them have met before, and you can hardly cut the tension with a scythe.  So it doesn't strike Louise as an accident when their gracious, wealthy hostess trips--almost fatally--on a loose stair rod. Her suspicions take root when, the very next day, a guest falls to his death on nearby Bear Mountain.  Within hours another guest plunges down the inn's picturesque waterfall in an apparent suicide.  Throw in some mysterious bumps in the night and passionate sighs overheard in the hallway, and Louise knows this is no garden-variety gathering.  Here the grapevine whispers of warring lovers, botanical scams, academic scandal, and family finagling. Is someone playing Grim Reaper in the Litchfield Falls paradise? And how many more guests--including one nosy garden show host--are about to be cut down?