I have spent the majority of my adult life as a teacher & educator. A profession that has always been my first passion in life, yet comes with its own levels of stress & anxiety. Given my need to constantly be working & have purpose in life, much like a honey bee, I decided to take up a summer job as a restaurant server & manager; a job I figured would placate my desire for structure and organization while serving as an income source for my summers off. As it turns out the demands of teaching middle school social studies did not mesh with the demands of the restaurant industry and only added to my stress. I was looking for an outlet to sooth the stress I felt of not working during the summer, yet would allow me some down time.

 

About six years into my teaching career, once I finally achieved my tenure status & settled in, I started to really yearn for lack of a better term; a hobby. All my life my parents have been involved in gardening. I can remember planting seeds with my mother as a child and watering the flowers with my father. I always found the process to be quite soothing. So one day while in the middle of a stressful period I found myself at the hardware store and wandered into the garden center. Bright blue and white phlox caught my eye, one of the flowers I remembered planting with my father as a young child. It was then I had a sort of epiphany, I wanted to start a real working garden. I purchased and planted those phlox right there on the spot and boom, I was hooked. I had found my Zen! It soon became the perfect outlet for me; an activity that I could use all my skills to achieve and fulfill my desires to continually educate myself on new and interesting topics.

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I put my teacher brain to work and began to plan the best way to begin my journey as a gardener. It was then I thought about establishing a herb garden. I found that drawing up garden maps and reading about planting schedules eased my idle mind and added a homegrown element to my other hobby, cooking. After a year of growing potted herbs and spices I decided to transform my yard into the garden of my dreams. The process taught me how important it is not only to be soothed by the beauty of nature but to be a good steward of all of nature's wonders; flora and fauna, large and small. 

 

From there, my philosophy on gardening evolved and I discovered the importance of Organic gardening. A task that may seem more difficult than the alternative; and I suppose in some ways it is, but is vital to the sustainability of the earth I was growing from. The more I immersed myself in organic gardening, companion planting, & all that goes with it, the more I found this method was the superior option to its quicker alternative. An alternative that often bore damaging consequences, as most quick and easy options often do. It was then I decided to become a part of the change I wanted to see in the world and join the organic gardening revolution. As the years have passed and challenges have been overcome I wanted to start this blog as a way to invite people to join me, with cocktail in hand, helping to return the earth to a more natural state while enjoying the bounty of our labors.