Believe it or not, I have a Master’s degree (and the better part of a PhD, heaven help me) that focuses on the study of prehistoric human-plant interactions (the technical term is archaeobotanist, or paleoethnobotanist, but that sounds way more pretentious and expert-like that I ever aspired to be). I’ve always been fascinated by the way humans look at and think about plants, and the ways we interact with our landscape, our food, and one another as a result. I spent about two years studying acorns in the prehistoric Southeast (and yes, it was every inch as fascinating as it sounds–I know for a stone cold fact that only two people ever read my thesis on the topic; one was my dad, and I had three people on my thesis committee, so you do the math), and along the way read nearly every gardening book I could get my hands on. I even qualified as a Master Gardener (a program you should absolutely look into doing with your local County Extension Service; it’s free to you and the amount of information available is staggering) while still in graduate school.
What I love about the sewing community, both the folks I only know IRL and the ones I have had the privilege to meet online, is the way so many “domestic” activities are interwoven, and how a lot of them have been brought into our modern lives with an updated feel. Gardening is one of those. I don’t consider it a departure from sewing, just another way of creating with my hands and interacting with those I love by nurturing and growing. I don’t have decades of on-the-ground experience, but I can tell you what worked for me and what I’m experimenting on now. These are the posts where my garden is growing.
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