my debt.
I graduated.
Then I worked.
Nurseries first.
Landscape crews.A municipal parks department. Eventually, I became a horticultural designer specializing in drought-tolerant gardens, drainage landscapes, native plant restoration, and residential installations. By twenty-eight, I had my own business. By thirty, I had four employees, a work truck, a waiting list, and a workshop behind the small bungalow I bought on the edge of town. ” At family dinners, if someone asked what I did, Vanessa occasionally explained it for me. ” I stopped correcting her. Not because she was right.
