For as long as I can remember, I have always been passionate about gardening and arranging flowers. I learned beside both of my grandmothers when I was a little girl. One had a knack for gardening, and the other, a flare for design.

My Mimi, as my brother and I called her, would take us foraging for all things small and interesting - be it plants and their seeds, funny looking bugs and butterflies or remnant turtle shells and tadpoles. Anything that led to an adventure and a lesson of the natural world. I remember walking with her around our grandfather’s pond and carefully rummaging through her front porch potted garden complete with river rock borders and broken terracotta pots. She’d keep seeds in old film canisters and the plastic wrapping shed from her Misty Blue Slim 120 cigarettes. Her house was a museum of dusty, cat hair-covered treasures, and every horticultural book you could ever hope to collect. I miss her and that eclectic, old soul of hers. And much to my husband’s dismay, that trait must be genetic, because I now also have shelves of oddities, books, and handfuls of seeds scattered on the kitchen table most of the time…..