My love affair with all things botanical began when I was a small child and my mother took me around to the back yard to a little shaded garden and said, "This is yours. Here you can plant anything that you want." I don't remember all the things I grew or tried to grow there. I'm not sure that garden ever did very well. It was on the north side of the house, under the shade of a tree. We lived in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains at over 7000 feet. The knowledgeable gardener will understand that this is one of the greatest gardening challenges of all. I do remember that I was content. It gave me a great deal of joy to have a garden all my own. To this day gardening gives me an incredible sense of joy, well-being and peace.  When I am sad or angry or frustrated, I can go work in my garden and all angst disappears.

It seems to me that if everyone just had a little plot of land to cultivate a lot less wars might be fought. How in the world does one contemplate war when nurturing plants out of the ground or gazing upon a lily?

I suppose it was inevitable that I should love to grow things. I come from a line of gardeners. Many of the pictures I will share in coming issues have been taken in my mom's gardens. I only wish that I had pictures to share from my grandmother's gardens.

Not long after my husband and I got married, we bought our first digital camera. Never before had I devoted time to taking pictures and trying to improve my skills. The advent of the digital camera - the ability to play and experiment endlessly without the need for expensive film development sparked yet another facet of my love affair with things botanical. So now I have a multitude of flower pictures, and it's time I shared them. This will be my digital garden. A place to share images and whatever thoughts pop into my head.

This rambling may seem a bit disjointed, but it gives you a peek at who I am and why I'm here carrying on about flowers and herbs and gardening and such.