Transitions

Yesterday I watched another episode of Recreating Eden. If you’ve never seen the show, and you get the channel (VisionTV here in Canada), I highly recommend watching. Some of the episodes are about grand, formal, meticulously groomed gardens, and some are community plots or back yard gardeners. The show’s official website states,

Recreating Eden is a multi-award winning international lifestyle/documentary series produced by Merit Motion Pictures. Shot in HD, the series travels around the world to feature some of the world’s greatest private and public gardens and reveal the fascinating stories behind the gardeners who created them.

I even appeared recently in an episode that was done about a friend of mine who is a very creative, eco-conscious rooftop gardener in the City of Toronto. Gayla Trail is also the creator of You Grow Girl. More than simply a garden blog, You Grow Girl is a community of gardeners I’ve been honoured to be a part of since 2003.

While I was interviewed on camera during the shoot, none of what I said made it onto the final episode, which, quite frankly is just fine with me…I was pretty nervous when the camera was on me, and I had a hard time focusing. I’m sure I didn’t look natural at all, so I’m grateful the production editors had the good sense to cut my speaking bits out!

If you get a chance to see episode 62 about You Grow Girl, I’m the girl in the green t-shirt heading over to Ward’s Island on the ferry. The other woman is my good friend Sarah B. Hood, a wonderful friend who has taught me a lot about writing, and encourages me to continue to pursue web writing, particularly with my Vegetable Gardens column at Suite101.com.

To circle around back to my original point, the episode of Recreating Eden I watched yesterday was about a woman named Gudridur Helgadottir, who has spent the majority of her life in Iceland surrounded by gardens. She started working at a garden centre when she was fifteen years old, and although she made attempts at a formal education in law and engineering, she found herself returning again and again to the world of plants. This is the point, specifically, that I relate to.

Some of you may know that professionally I am employed as a Content Editor at a publishing company; I manage the publication of law books, mostly covering topics surrounding tax law. While this work can be extremely dry at times, and the pay seems inadequate most days (common in the publishing industry), the work allows me to work from home, which makes for a very nice lifestyle. In the summer, especially, I am grateful that I have the time early in the morning to water the garden and have my coffee on the back deck, surrounded by green and growing things.

However, although I have this full-time occupation, it most certainly is not my passion, which is why I’m so thrilled to be able to work a second part-time job on a perennial farm, where I’ll get paid to seed, water, pinch, pot and dig. It is my hope that this is a period of transition for me, that someday I will be able to make a living writing about and/or working with plants. I continue to search for ways to get involved in the gardening community in the area I live, searching for inspiration and opportunities to develop my skills and connect with other gardening folks.

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