The following letter super cedes many of the following responses I have ever had, mine included.
This contribution came from another and her 50ish! "beginnings" began a short-lived magazine called Bindweed.
On just another normal day in came this bouncy thing full of life and happiness. She had just turned 50 and was celebrating it. We talked and exchanged thoughts and became instant friends. Stay in touch, said I as I was heading out to a favorite beach of mine. I would write a poem called Driftwood, about lost lovers and all that stuff.
Imagine my surprise when a few days later (no email then) she writes to me.
It was to become the beginning of Bindweed. I entitled it --
"Well, I am a gardener by birth and avocation, a gardener both in the literal sense and in the figurative sense of sense of "seedsower." I come from a long line of green-thumbed individuals who, like me, spent more time caressing a blossom, talking to the plants, gazing in amazement and wonder than finding out the botanical name! There is a place for both, however. I will admit to that one of my treasures is a home movie taken of me with my paternal grandmother... I was about 2 years old (maybe younger) ... and she is holding me and walking through her rose garden ... bending close so that I could see and touch and smell the blossoms. Somehow, when I watch that silent film, from this distance and in this place which life and age have now placed me, I see my own spirit developing. A spiritual inheritance, a strong 'green' line was flowing from her to me. It flowed from her to my father, and even though my father and I had battles-royal, I feel his 'green' in me, a direct line (This is not to leave out my maternal grandmother ... Welsh, strict, proper, tough ... a lady ... who grew dahlias the size of dinner plates and roses fit for a queen ... or the dining- room table.
She could also ring the neck of a chicken in preparation for a proper Sunday dinner"
(c) Maggie Patterson
Fifteen years later I have not yet had any better description of how one fell into gardening.
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