Gardening Saved My Life
The first all-consuming garden I attempted was in Santa Fe, NM 1998. Swallowed in depression and unable to maintain an income stream of any consequence, I decided to garden. Prior to losing almost all of my freelance clients, I designed a brochure about xeriscape gardening. Intrigued by the plant-by-zone philosophy and with a lot of time on my hands, I took up xeriscaping the large plot outside my apartment.
I had virtually no income so I decided to scavenge around the 3.5 acre compound for fencing materials, wildflower seed, anything I could find that would enhance my garden area. I had also accumulated a lot of vegetable compost which I used to enrich the alkaline soil.
On my frequent walks in the arroyo behind the compound, I found a stash of discarded flagstone leftover from a construction job. An old school desk, lumber scraps, and river rock from there also ended up repurposed in the garden. There was one spot in the garden where nothing would grow so I took small river rocks and made a gigantic spiral with them, then sprinkled cosmos seeds over the stones. In a few months, those cosmos grew to over 5 feet high and shouted their existence in bright pinks, Fushia, and white.
At the time, I was interested in building gates to cordon off my area along with the coyote fences I’d already installed. So I rustled up all my found desert objects, a little paint, and built two whimsical gates. Several of my friends claimed they should have been art pieces. That aspect never occurred to me. I simply loved putting together odd metal pieces patinated from the desert sun and weathered gray wood. It was scads of fun.
At the end of the summer, my garden experiment was a robust success. And so on August 31, my 50th birthday, I put together a garden party. I cooked up a wonderful squash soup from all the volunteer danish squash that showed up over the growing season and strung up tiny white lights in the Juniper trees and along the garden edges. Friends brought salads from their gardens and lots and lots of wine and beer. We played loud music, drank and danced until the wee hours.
Soon after, I was hired by John Muir Publications in Santa Fe as a design coordinator where I worked on travel books. Rick Steves was a major client then and it was working on his books that launched me into the book design industry.
