Meet Your Neighbor
Laura Simon
BY MARY LANCASTER INDEPENDENT WRITER
Once quite the traveler, Laura Simon is now very happily grounded at her remote Wauwinet homestead, pretty much living a selfsufficient existence - her extraordinary garden yields vegetables yearround for her and spouse Jim Gross; they have chickens for eggs; bees for honey and plenty of fallen trees from the woods surrounding the property to keep the stove well stoked all winter.

Simon was born and raised in Stamford, Conn. She first visited the island on vacation with her parents in 1960, and her parents continued to spend time here in the summers. During her high school days Simon worked Nantucket summers in vocations that included a dishwasher at the Harbor House's former Sidewalk Cafe and as a sign painter.

Following graduation from high school, she lived for a while in New York City. She then joined her sister, Susan, in Italy, where Susan remained after attending art college there. Simon loved Italy and stayed from 1969 through 1973, during which period she also traveled around Europe, went to Africa, and later lived in the Seychelles Islands, a group of 99 islands halfway between India and Africa.

Simon returned to the U.S. in 1973 when her parents had moved to Nantucket. Her mother, Hilda, opened a fabric store called The Calico Whale, first on the wharf by the Anglers' club, then in the second floor over what is now Kim England's jewelry shop on Main Street. Simon decided to make the island her home. The problem was, she was so used to tropical conditions after the Seychelles Islands, she decided to forego that first harsh winter and landed a job as a cook on the charter schooner Tiki that traveled through the Carribean in the winter of 1974.

As fate would have it, Jim Gross happened to be the schooner's first mate and engineer. Propinquity struck, and the rest is history. Interestingly, the couple discovered that they had grown up just 20 miles apart. After that winter, Laura and Jim came to Nantucket - he had never been here before - and Jim launched a marine engine sales and service business while Simon did "odds and ends" and began writing books.

She had also developed an interest in gardening, starting with a small herb garden where the couple initially rented. Once they built their home in Wauwinet, Simon's interest in gardening blossomed, and what started as a small corner patch expanded to a 15,000 square-foot fenced area with about half now under cultivation. Besides that, she has planted fruit trees as well.

"It grew and grew with my passion," she said.

Along the way, Simon was writing historical novels, but her last of five published books, "Dear Mr. Jefferson," released in 1998, was all about gardenin and written as though she and Thomas Jefferson were speaking to one another on a subject that was dear to him.

Years ago, she volunteered as a board member with the Friends of the Atheneum, but now Simon is consumed with her gardening and writing projects, including ideas for another book. Maintaining that as she gets older the days become shorter, Simon said she looks at sweaters she knitted years ago and wonders how she found time to do them. Now she keeps busy with work around the house, including a huge terracing of a part of the yard where this year she planted pocket gardens between fallen logs from adjacent woods. She also enjoys spending time with Jim and their dogs Hercules and Dewey and cats Jack and Olive.

"There are always projects in the house I want to tackle," she said, surrounded last Saturday by Christmas wrapping paper. "I'm always walking around the property and seeing things I

would love to have done." I