Gardening writer Jeanette Marantos died Feb. 7 at age 70 while on assignment in Riverside. She was born in Riverside, too, on March 13, 1955, and spent nearly half her life here. Riverside was her native soil. “We attended the same United Methodist Church in Riverside in our early days, both gradu ated from Poly High and then UC Riverside, and we both worked for The Press-Enterprise,” Kris Lovekin, a retired reporter and friend of Marantos’, tells me. “She was a great observer of life.” Marantos joined the P-E in 1973 while in college. Among her unglamorous duties over the next six years: taking dictation from correspondents in the field, writing headlines for the bridge and advice columns and compiling weather data. Yet all these years later, Bill Linehan, then a copy editor, remembers her vividly as “outgoing and effervescent,” saying, “She would enter the newsroom with good-natured energy.” Marantos moved on in 1980 to Washington, where she reported for The Wenatchee World and taught high school journalism, before returning to Riverside — everyone returns eventually — in 2014. Hired the next year by the Los Angeles Times, she had a grim assignment: the Homicide Report series. The newspaper tracked every homicide in Los Angeles County and wrote profiles of each victim to humanize the death toll. Marantos is said to have relished the work. But after three years of attending funerals and speaking with grieving or angry family members, all of this while living in Riverside, she contributed some change-of-pace stories about gardening, a lifelong passion. “She was always a gardener and loved native plants,” a son, Dimitri Smith, tells me. Reader interest was high. The Times gave her a new assignment, dubbed the plants beat. Jeanette Marantos, photographed circa 1983 with husband Steve Smith, had a lifelong love of the outdoors and gardening. (Courtesy Dimitri Smith) Gardens, farmers markets and California native plants were regular topics of her stories and monthly newsletter. Expansively, she also covered topics like human composting, the Eaton and Palisades fire sites, and wildlife crossings. In 2021, after her husband’s death, she left Riverside for Ventura, where she bought a house around the corner from Dimitri, his wife and their newborn son, and filled her garden with sunflowers, edibles and vegetables. On Feb. 6, the plants beat brought her back to Riverside for a California Native Plant Society conference. She was driving out of town afterward when she suffered a torn aorta. At Riverside Community Hospital, she underwent emergency surgery and, seven hours later, died. “It could have happened anywhere. It just happened to occur near the hospital where she was born,” Dimitri says. “She was born and died in the same hospital.” A writer of Marantos’ talents could really have done something with that. Leveling up Let me catch up on some other Riverside items, starting with my Feb. 1 column on the State of the City event, which was themed “Leveling Up.” “I enjoyed your column this morning. Had more ‘meat’ than usual!! But could you possibly explain what the heck ‘leveling up’ means??” asks a puzzled Mary Sue Berkley. Improving, in a word. “Leveling up” was originally a video game term that referred to players advancing to the next level and unlocking new abilities. Now it’s a buzzword applied to aspects of real life. Rather than meat, reader Tracy Kahn found that column to be mostly gristle. She calls it “a string of complaints, many baseless and superficial, such as having to go walk down from the parking lot and take an escalator.” Advises Tracy: “You seem not to like Riverside so perhaps you should refrain from writing about Riverside in the future.” Can I at least finish today’s column? Sweet ‘n’ sour Lemon sculptures and a lemon-themed mural appear outside the Raising Cane’s in Riverside, a city best known for oranges. (Photo by David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG) In that same column, I referenced a Riverside Raising Cane’s restaurant with oversized lemon sculptures and a lemon-themed mural facing the busy three-way corner of Magnolia, Central and Brockton avenues. I wondered: “Why do the Riverside-themed sculptures outside the restaurant depict lemons, not oranges?” Reader Dan Meier believes the lemons are there as a tribute to the Palm Heights neighborhood’s history as a lemon-growing district. Cane’s is right across Central from the old boundary. “So, the lemons are more historically correct for the location, even though the parent navel orange is only a few blocks down the road,” Meier says. Superfan Tracy Kahn, meanwhile, informs me: “You don’t know a lot about Riverside since you think oranges were the only citrus that was grown here. The lemon sculptures outside Raising Cane’s are perfectly appropriate and very attractive.” I asked historian and lifelong Riversider Steve Lech about all this. “To my knowledge, lemons were never a large crop here in Riverside, but in Corona,” Lech replies. “I decided the lemons are there because Cane’s is known for their lemonade, which is their signature drink, not because of lemons being grown here.” A representative of the city’s Planning Department, supplied with both theories, settles the matter. “Cane’s presented the art installation to staff as part of the entitlement process,” the staffer writes. “They chose to include lemons as it aligned with their menu. Bingo!” Ben Bradlee Jr. Newspaperman Ben Bradlee Jr. is best known for his investigative role at the Boston Globe, which made him part of the Oscar-winning newsroom drama “Spotlight.” He got his start in the 1970s at The Press-Enterprise, as I wrote here Feb. 8. That column quoted one of his P-E editors, Marcia McQuern, who told me Bradlee Jr. had arrived in Riverside as “a green kid” who “became a very good reporter.” Related Articles In Ontario, some speak up for Jay Littleton Ball Park’s future Art of sculptor John Svenson showcased in Ontario and Claremont Tiny Montclair embraces urban-density housing near transit and mall Three Dog Night drove San Bernardino audience wild in 1969 Ontario may replace storied Jay Littleton Ball Park with a splash pad Some retired P-E journos hadn’t known much about Bradlee Jr.’s time at the paper and thanked me for filling in the gaps. Bradlee Jr. himself tells me the column brought back a lot of positive memories. He adds, “I’m glad Marcia McQuern thinks I finally got it together!” brIEfly In a first, my employers are organizing a public event around me, me, me. I’ll be reading, talking, meeting, greeting and answering questions between sips of coffee from 1 to 3 p.m. Sunday, March 1, at Back to the Grind, 3575 University Ave., in Riverside. You have to register in advance at scng.com/davidallen because of limited capacity. Hitting capacity has, uh, never been an issue with my previous talks, so this might be another first. David Allen writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday, his upper limit. Email [email protected], phone 909-483-9339 and follow davidallencolumnist on Facebook or Instagram, @davidallen909 on X or @davidallen909.bsky.social on Bluesky. ...read more read less