It all started when the only thing I wanted to do was hide in my garden. My heart broken and my body failing me, it was the one place I felt safe. Surrounded by broccoli stalks taller than me, two towering grandfather pecan trees, overgrown mint, and surprisingly sweet carrots burrowing into the ground below, the world around me became more peaceful. The plants became my teachers as some wilted and some thrived, some brought bees and some brought aphids. All of them taught me what it means to be alive.

This was the clover.

I come from a family of artists going back generations. I was taught to look at the world in a peculiar way. Well, peculiar compared to most people, I’ve come to find out. My great grandmother believed learning to paint was as essential of a skill as learning to write words. She said, “If you’re old enough to hold a pencil, you’re old enough to hold a paintbrush.” Peering at the small veins on a leaf to observe the tiniest details came naturally to me because I grew up watching my mother paint strands of hair with a fine watercolor brush. Like my great grandmother, Rose, I also became a middle school teacher. I think geometry is beautiful and I love Emily Dickinson poems. Romanesca and narrow fellow in the grass.

This was the bee.

It will never cease to amaze me how a diminutive seed contains the exact perfect ingredients to connect with the mycelium in the damp soil to burst up with a lettuce head or a brussels sprout stalk, winding vines of loofahs, or a bright maple tree. Food is medicine and plants are powerful healers. I am in awe.

This is the revery.