That's me over there in the picture.  I'm not really a vlogger or a blogger, so I'm new at this.  You can tell by my free website and head shot taken with my iPhone.  I started a series of YouTube videos after a few of my friends asked for some gardening tips.  When we started talking, I realized really how much knowledge I had absorbed in 20 years of gardening experience.  I don't know, maybe one day my adult grandkids will want to start a garden, and at least this way all of my lessons will be documented.  Gardening is a hobby.  I have a full-time law enforcement job and two beautiful daughters to raise.  

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I started off planting in pots on my apartment balcony twenty years ago.  Well, really I started just by watching my parents plant every flower and shrub under the sun during my childhood.  My gardening passion really took off when we moved to our current home, where we have six acres in the woods and a huge pasture that I converted into a vegetable/orchard/everything garden. 

One Christmas morning, my husband surprised me with a greenhouse.  He and our neighbor worked two full days to build the perfect foundation for it and put it together for all of my future gardening adventures.  He died three years later, unexpectedly from a heart attack.  Everything changed after that.  I tried to garden, but it brought me no joy.  The garden died, right along with a big piece of me.

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Wow, I guess I might be a blogger, I'm already on paragraph four.  I had heard the phrase, "Gardening is good for the soul," but never understood it fully until now.  Before, my greenhouse was an escape from work and parenting, but now it is truly one of the stronger threads holding me together every day.  So come on, let's grow some optimism together! I just made that up. 

I have never been afraid of hard work, because hard work almost always has a visual payoff.  I love seeing the fruits of my labor.  Just seeing them is enough for me, I don't even need to taste the vegetables come July.  I'm not sharing gardening tips to make money, but hey if a few sponsors want to help grow my kids' college savings then I'm not turning it away!  

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I share all this for two reasons.  If I can help inspire someone who is going through a tough time, then I want to do that in any capacity that I can.  Who knew it would ever be through gardening?!  Also, after years of pinning other people's gardening tips, I've learned that not everyone out there is a gardener!! Clearly, some of their tips are cut and pasted over and over, and you get lost in the ads with no original content. Over the years I have had some epic fails, abundant harvests and a lot of fun.  My hope is to share some of this experience so that we can "Grow Some Optimism" together, ha I'm liking that phrase.  Send me your tips and stories! I promise I will give credit where credit is due. 

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