In #8, as one bud opens, another is plainly losing its juice and the sooner it falls off, the more energy the other two will have.  If this sounds cavalier, please understand from a horticulturist’s experience that plants, like people, are born, they live, or not, and some go sooner than others.

In 1985, I left Missouri, along with a thriving horticulture business, for good.  Confident about what I knew, it was time to leave, to change, or die on the vine.  I yearned to learn, and was certain New York would teach, even though I didn’t know what knowledge to seek, what sacrifices would have to be made.  “What about nature?’ my friends asked when they heard I was leaving.  ‘How can you, of all people, live in a city so devoid of it?’  My pat answer was that the kind of nature New York has is of the human variety.

What I’ve learned in that department has included my own nature, some of it wild, some wise, parts of me are fearful, and I’m as courageous as one needs be to keep going in full vitality.  Throughout this living education, the passion for horticulture has remained at my side.  In addition to extic travels in the most becautiful places on the planet, my apartment windows face south and are full of blooming orchids and plump succulents, And Marissa and I are doing this tribute to the cycles of life through her orched paintings, with more projects involving nature in mind.  Life naturally gets richer.