I never planned to be a gardener

A huge assumption people make about me is that I have some formal education in gardening. A degree, a childhood spent on a farm, you name it. The truth is you only see what my garden looks like now, ten+ years in. You don’t see the very beginning. The beginning is what I want to tell you about today. My start to gardening had almost nothing to do with plants.

I’m the youngest of six kids of a blended family. I was the first in my family to go to college and graduate. I went to UCLA, and I carried a lot of pressure with me. The deal I made with myself was: college had to lead directly to a well-paying job, and the job had to justify every dollar I was borrowing to get there.

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