None of these views of the garden exists any more. I’m just sharing photos of it from over the years since I’ve realized many gardens don’t have as many scene changes as this one has had. I’ve come to enjoy that quite a bit recently. I don’t even recognized these photos as the same place in a way. The garden is change. My garden has transformed many times.

I’ve lived in my home since 2006 and have spent a lot of time messing things up and rearranging everything again and again. I’ve screwed a lot up, I’ve killed a lot of plants, I’ve changed, I’ve grown, and my soft-opening Summer of 2022 HPSO Open Garden is upon me and I’m not completely ready for showtime.

Isn’t that the story of our lives? And while I like to keep my days in order, with a rather predictable routine, to be honest, I’ve come to better understand that I’m much more in flux and in movement, and performing—always.

Yet I’ve thought of myself as otherwise for so long.

I think of myself like this, kind of a lump, because I was traumatized at 30 by a primary immune disease diagnosis and I lacked the emotional support I needed for the first few years. That just snowballed into painful isolation. Many of you can relate now that you’ve been through the pandemic. I was living that kind of isolation long before COVID-19.

While the world continued to live around me, I just learned about plants while trying to ignore my difficult symptoms and the lack of available treatments. I had to wait and observe both the garden and myself.

I’m grateful that during both experiences I had a garden, but it feels to me like they were very different places. It as dark here during the first period of isolation, but during the pandemic, the second isolation, immense growth took place.

Preparing for an earlier Open Garden date this year was intentionally planned in order to get this place in order so that I could enjoy it even more this summer. While I’m not 100% happy with how it looks, I’m well on my way to being more organized, and I had a ton of fun working with friends to prepare.

After this, my next Open Garden is in a month so I intend to keep playing out there with friends for the next few weeks. It is beyond wonderful to have some help.

I’ve thought about the many lessons I’ve learned, and I’m less interested than ever in reviewing painful memories I’ve had here. I think mostly now of the love, the kindness, and the happiness of being with others. I look forward to having folks over for dinner and for the laugher and maybe even the unexpected tears to come. Life is always a series of challenges and we must take the good along with the bad.

And that mighty thank you I mentioned?

I feel filled to the brim nowadays with a genuine gratitude I’ve been savoring. I have it for life in general, for the little Annie inside of myself (since she so happily lived so that I could be the centered me of today), and for the friends and colleagues I have who bring meaning into my days.

Thank you for being you too.

Joy, curiosity, strength, and healing simply couldn’t be the same without all of you. We’re all in this together.