How I got here...
When I was ten years old or so, I was hired by our neighbor Ms. B. (a retired science teacher) to assist with her gardening tasks. I did weed pulling, dahlia digging and lawn mowing using one of those new fangled (back then) electric mowers which had a 900 foot orange cord. The mower handle could be flipped so that you didn't need to turn the machine, just flip the handle and push it the other way.
Time passed on and I forgot about growing stuff. I went to school, got married and then when we bought a new home, thought it would be a blast to grow some habanero peppers! I bought a small chocolate hab from our local garden center and scratched a hole in our hard packed red clay soil. After dropping the seedling in the hole I thougth that gardening would be easy. The plant didn't last a week.
Research led to putting plants in five gallon buckets with real dirt and we had hot peppers! Next, we built a bed using garden soil mixed with the red clay and we had tomatoes! I also built a cold frame so we could have home grown greens in the winter and I was hooked.