The Therapeutic Journey—Teaching, Tax, and Cultivating a Garden

hey george how are you today i'm doing just fine thank you so i came to your beautiful garden so inspired by all the things that you grow i'd love to hear your journey i know you were a high school teacher teaching math to students and let's hear about your journey how did you become a teacher and your gardening journey let's can you share a little bit about that How did you become a teacher well i i started as a teacher in high school i was a swimming instructor and then i went to college got a degree in math vietnam war sort of steered me towards teaching because then i didn't have to go there um i spent 18 years teaching math then i went into doing income tax where i taught clients so i'm still a teacher i teach gardening now and look at your beautiful garden all around it's just gorgeous tell me more about your gardening passion i Tell me about your gardening passion grew up with a mother and grandmother that loved plants and i just kind of inherited that um it's just you know i i'm i'm really big into asexual reproduction i like taking cuttings of flowers making new flowers um i'm just i don't know it it is my church in a way and i just i get restored by being out here and i know you were part of some community gardening project too right like and you share some of the plans the fremont senior What are the plans for your garden center has a new name but anyway there's a garden club there and we haven't met for over a year now but that's uh a lot of it my connections are through that group uh it's basically people that are for the most part retired there's a few younger people in their 50s and 60s but most of us are in 70s 80s 90s and we love plants so we have that in common which grows to other things you get to know the people everyone are a couple of plants that you're like really you know like you hold close to your heart almost well The names of the plants i enjoy playing with words and so the names of the plants also um i enjoy one of them is a small round leafy thing that looks like a belly button and its name is umbilicus rupestri some guy named rupert named umbilicus another one is a purple i kind of think of it as kind of a fireworks purple boom and it's the peruvian skilla so of course where did it come from spain it came on a ship named the peru so these fancy latin names they're all made up and you remember all the names i do not remember all of them but some of them they're they're fun words they're they trip off the tongue you know umbilicus you know umbilical uh that one is probably my favorite plant name is it a leafy or a flower it it's a leafy uh related to it here in california something called miners lettuce grows along the edge of streams and things it's native to the united kingdom to the british isles thank you george i'm loving your garden and i appreciate that you share it with me well thank you some of the things and i always think about you when i look at them thank you okay well thank you