How I Became a Floral Enthusiast

When I was growing up, I was always collecting groups of things: stickers, stamps, unsharpened pencils with cool designs, and as always - random items from outside like rocks, dried flowers, acorns for good luck. I was quiet but observant of my surroundings. I remember being fascinated by the way trees and shrubs grew, especially ones that arched or grew in a crooked, grotesque way.



I was a bookworm so of course I checked out books about flowers, plants, and even went through a phase of reading landscape books and sketching my own landscape designs. We had a children's anthology series called Childcraft - The How and Why Series. One of the books in the series, The Green Kingdom, was a favorite of mine. The book had this cool game called the tree-path game where you had to follow a path and identify the plant pictured in order to select the correct path to get to the end of the game.



What really influenced my interest in flowers and plants was my mom who loved gardening. I always tagged along with her to my two favorite places as a kid: the local hardware store and the garden shop. I can't remember a time where we didn't have an abundant amount of flowers and plants in our yard especially during the summertime. For "Way Back Wednesday", I decided to post some older photos of my mom when she lived in London during the 1970's. The first photo was taken in London, the second photo was taken during a trip to France with my aunty (my dad's sister), and the last photo is a vintage selfie that my dad took when he and my mom were dating.



Some people think their parents have no influence in how they turn out whatsoever. I beg to differ. I really don't think I would be as passionate for flowers and plants if it had not been for my mom's love for gardening (thanks Mom!).