“Growing up, there was a lot of chaos and turmoil in my home. I had two drug-addicted parents. And when I was 8, my mom started dealing drugs. People were coming and going. There were a lot of unsafe activities. There was alcohol. There was physical and other abuse. It was just an insanely unhealthy situation.

“But I was determined to have a good life. Whether they were passed out on the couch or whatever, it wasn’t going to affect my day. I kind of had to be the sun, moon and stars for myself. I had to be the author of my own life. I realized that if I didn’t make happiness for myself, then I’d be sitting in my room crying and miserable all the time.

“I tried my best to self-isolate or disassociate. I was doing a lot of escapism. I loved anything fantasy. I was a really smart kid, and I loved reading books. I loved writing stories. I also rode my bike a lot. Whatever it took to make sure I had a good time, despite what was going on around me. My sister was several years older, but she wasn’t really hands on with me. So I was pretty independent.

“When I was nearly 12, my mom seemed ready to stop doing drugs and turn over a new leaf. That was great. I was happy for her. But then she had herself a last hurrah, and she overdosed. She didn’t make it. I was devastated. Despite everything that had been going on for years, I loved my mom very much. Even though she was not awesome to me, I still thought the world of her. I was the kind of person who tried to make everything seem better than it really was.

“A few days after the funeral, without my knowledge, my father signed over his rights to me to my grandfather. And he left, just took off. I was pretty upset. I thought for sure that my mom’s death was going to be his wake-up call. That we were going to be OK. We were going to try to be normal people now. But that wasn’t the case.

Turning to drugs

“After I started living with my grandparents, my grandmother had a big stroke. I was helping take care of her. And because of my mom’s death, they all told me that she shouldn’t be under any more stress. So I was never really able to grieve. I had to swallow all that. I was so angry and lonely. It’s no excuse, but it’s kind of what led me down the path of doing drugs to numb those feelings

“As a high school freshman, I was falling off badly. I couldn’t see how anything was worth being sober for. I was doing any substance I could get my hands on. I was really addicted to certain prescription pills in my high school years. I wasn’t going to class. I was way behind on my credits. By my senior year, they put me in alternative school. The principal was like, ‘You need to get this under control.’ And I did buckle down and even finished early. You couldn’t tell me a damn thing. I was still on drugs, and I felt like a million bucks. I felt unstoppable

“I decided to do graduation huge. So I got a hotel room and stayed there for about three months. All my friends were with me. It was always a party. But when the end of summer came, everyone left.

“My lowest point came while lying on the hotel room bed after taking I don’t even know how many pills. I told myself if I overdosed that night, it wouldn’t even matter. Maybe I’d go where my mom went, and I wouldn’t hurt anymore. I started feeling like my heart was slowing down, and then I kind of faded. I was so accepting of, ‘I’m dying.’ But I woke up the next morning. And the heartbreak that I felt, realizing that I hadn’t died, was unbelievably heavy. I wanted to hang myself.

“Then I started thinking about when I was a kid, how I told myself that if nobody ever made the happiness, it was up to me. I felt that I’d let myself down because I hadn’t made any happiness for myself in a really long time. That’s when I decided to leave the hotel room, go home to my grandparents, and start making some changes.

‘These kids are awesome’

“At 18, I began a relationship with my now husband, Kory. We’d been best friends forever. We had our ups and downs, and when I was 20, I had a miscarriage. I’d told myself if I ever got the chance to be a mom, I’d make sure I had a normal family. So that rocked me really hard. It left me heartbroken.

“A few months after that, I got pregnant again, and we had our first biological son together. That put everything into perspective. Feeling the love of a child and for a child was groundbreaking. When he was about 9 months old, I learned that I was pregnant again. And I started to feel this dread. What if I can’t love this new child as much as my other one? I thought my love for my first son and my older stepson was enough.

“Then one day I told myself, this is going to be my mom’s baby. Even though my mom was very tan, my older sister had blue eyes and almost blonde hair, light skin. They told her, whenever you have a second child, it’s probably going to be a boy. She started fantasizing about having this angelic, blue-eyed, almost blonde-haired, light-complected little boy. Then here I come with tan skin, brown eyes, dark hair. Anyway, I told my husband that this was going to be my mom’s baby. I was sure it was going to be a boy with blue eyes. I woke up the next day with this sense of knowing, this peace. And sure enough, he was born exactly how I pictured.

“These kids are awesome. Our oldest will be 14 in February. Our middle son just turned 9 and our youngest is 7. I love all my children, but the youngest definitely holds a special place in my heart. He reminds me so much of my mom.

“Even though life was extremely difficult when I was young, with my mom on drugs and not always around, I loved her very much. So with my youngest, I’ve always had this sense of familiarity that I felt for my mom. Maybe I just dreamed the whole thing up. But I’ll embrace it. I feel like I deserve every single bit of magic there is.

Unwelcome health scares

“Four years ago, my husband was driving us home from Austin, and I started to feel weird. I was getting a headache, and my vision was getting fuzzy. I didn’t want to overreact. I was going to try to sleep the rest of the way.

“When we got home, I sluggishly walked into the house and basically passed out on my bed. I woke up the next day, opened my eyes, and there’s this big blind spot in my vision. I still had this splitting headache. And I’m like, what the hell is happening? I spent a lot of time with my grandmother after several strokes. I saw the symptoms present in her, but nothing like this. So I immediately put stroke out of my head.

“I was in the hospital a week, doing every test possible. They didn’t know what was going on. Until I got the CT scans back. Guess what? I had a damn stroke. I was beside myself. Here I was, 26 years old, and I’m like, what the hell? They have to give me medicine to calm me down.

“Then they do an ultrasound, and they find out that I have a hole in my heart. In rare cases, it can send a blood clot to your brain and cause a stroke. And I’m like, this cannot be happening to me. Haven’t I had enough bullshit in my life?

“I had been doing everything right around that time. I was hiking with my kids, eating right, drinking plenty of water. I was angry about the whole thing. It seemed so unfair. I’d been through so much already in my life, so I didn’t want anymore. Like, whoever has my voodoo doll, you can stop now.

“It happened during COVID. So I couldn’t have visitors. I was losing my mind because I’m away from my kids, my babies, who are extremely attached to me. I felt very isolated and stressed out. I had all these breakdowns, but then I started having breakthroughs. I was like, OK, I’m going to come out of here bigger and better. Nothing can stop me. I’m actually a tsunami. And it was because of my love for plants and gardening. I had big ideas that I was determined to make happen.

Gardening therapy

“Before my stroke, I had discovered a love for gardening. I found solace in plants, a purpose and sense of reward. I started collecting succulents, and I was having a whole lot of fun with it. It was very therapeutic. I was making breakthroughs without having to go to a therapist.

“I started to sell a few plants here and there through social media. Then I decided that I was going to make it into a little side business. It would allow me to stay flexible with the kids and do something for myself. So I set up a plant page on Instagram.

“Our family has deep roots in Baytown, and I wanted to find a way to connect with my community. I wanted everyone to love plants and gardening as much as I do. While I was in the hospital, I started focusing on what I’d do when I got out. I had this extensive knowledge from researching and working with these plants. And I’m like, I could teach people all about it. That’s what I’m going to do.

“Since then, I’ve done a lot. I’ve taught plant classes for little kids at daycares. I was blessed with an opportunity to work with students at an elementary school in La Porte. I’ve done countless classes for adults. I’m a regular at Baytown’s farmers market, and I plan to start going to the one in Mont Belvieu. It’s all about succulents. And I’m having a blast. Hopefully, making a difference in people’s lives.

“Looking back on everything that’s happened in my life, where I’ve been and where I am now, I feel this overwhelming sense of happiness, this sense of magic. Just knowing that I can do whatever I want to do. Overcoming adversity in every possible way. From drug-addicted parents to being a drug addict myself, to having a stroke, and permanently losing some of my vision. To having a husband, kids, and being able to be a loving person despite what I’ve gone through. I’ve never let anything stop me from doing what I want.

“I’m going to write a book about my life one day. It’s going to be fantastic. Just watch. I can’t wait.”

— Felicia Garcia

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“My mom gardened a lot when I was younger. And way, way back, my grandfathers on both sides were potato farmers from Maine. So I wonder if there’s not something in my genes that just makes me want to grow stuff.

“My husband and I started with a little 4-by-4 garden, growing some tomato plants. Then we started growing more and more things, and experimenting. It was a lot of fun. The world seemed so crazy at that time. So we thought, when you can’t really control anything else around you, wouldn’t it be nice to grow our own food? We were working low-wage jobs, and I was in school. It was just so hard to pay for anything extra. We weren’t sure how we were going to make ends meet. It was a way for us to have a very cheap hobby that was like an investment. You actually get something back that’s tangible.

“From there, we moved from the concept of gardening to permaculture. In general how we grow things in the United States is a monoculture where you grow one thing, like a whole field of corn or strawberries. Permaculture is permanent culture. You do something that kind of mimics a natural forest. You plant trees, like canopy trees, and then understory trees, and then you grow things all around it. It creates a food web that makes it a lot more sustainable. It also gives you a variety of foods that you can’t always get at the store. It’s kind of hard to get kumquats and loquats and fresh figs, those kinds of things. And it’s convenient. Say if you want some basil. Instead of going all the way to Kroger, you can just walk out your back door steps.

“I think that if everybody gardened, a lot of problems could be solved. If something bad did happen, and everybody had a basic little bit of gardening, they’d stand a better chance of providing for their family. Plus, it’s good for mental health. Everybody is so busy, they don’t have time to do anything for themselves. If you can get somebody started gardening, they might go out there for two or three minutes, and they’ll end up staying for 10 or 15. And they’re doing something kind of mindful.

“We have a young baby, and we both work a lot. Our jobs are exhausting in different ways. But having the garden, and the way that we grow, it’s like knowing you’re doing something good for the environment that’s also good for your household. For us, it’s our refuge.”

— Catherine Hunter-McMillin (with husband, Matthew)

The couple run The Enchanted Food Forest of Southeast Texas from their home in Liberty. 

Related:

• Parents coping with baby born during pandemic

The post Their garden is their refuge appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“Through the years we’ve had all sorts of hobbies. We start out with something and then we go nuts. We had exotic birds for a while. Then we raised Dobermans. When my husband was doing over-the-road truck driving, he decided I needed something else to do here at the house. That’s what got us started with plumeria.

“He always liked the way the flowers looked, so we started small and it’s just kept growing. We sell a lot, like at the Plumeria Society shows. People around town know me. I’ll run into someone who will say, ‘You’re the plumeria lady.’ I used to be the bird lady. Then I was the dog lady. Now I guess I’m the plumeria lady.

“It’s fun. I enjoy it. But it’s a lot of work, too. I think this is going to be my last hobby.”

— Elaine Williams

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“I started the garden in 2006 as an effort to help beautify Texas Avenue and its surrounding community, and to educate others about growing organically. It was my belief that if the community could see a living example of what could be done on a small scale, then others would do the same. That is still my belief.

“That first year I planted the entire garden in flowers. Now I grow flowers and vegetables.

“My love of gardening began as a child. I learned so much from my parents and grandparents. I have always had a garden. It connects me to my past, my family and the earth.”

— Noe Tristan

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“That Christmas, when I began to do my hair, I felt something and couldn’t lift my arm. The doctor kept giving me pills, but they didn’t help. It turned out to be breast cancer.

“I began to pray and to use noni. It’s a fruit that grows on a tree, and you make juice from it. They say it helps with cancer. I also use moringa. It’s a plant, and you can make tea with it. I’m a big believer in herbs, just like my mother always was.

“The doctor thought the cancer would spread all around, and he said I could die. He wanted me to get the operation right away, but I didn’t want them to take the whole breast. I wanted to get a second opinion. So I decided to go back home to Curaçao for three months. After three other doctors told me to go back to America and have the surgery, that’s what I did.

“But the cancer hadn’t moved. It stayed right where it was. The doctor who thought it was spreading and I was going to die, he didn’t believe in what I believe. I believe in God and my herbs.”

— Lady Nina Decaster, 70

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“For most of my years I’ve been a plant taxonomist. I get hired to identify plants.

“My most interesting work has been in the Big Thicket here in Texas. I have a species list, so I find the plants and write scientific papers on them. I’m working on a big species list right now with a friend of mine in the Beaumont Unit of the Big Thicket.”

What are you most known for in your field?
“Well, I discovered a new species over in the hillside bogs in east Texas. The genus is Rudbeckia. The family is Asteraceae. It’s a sunflower called Rudbeckia Scabrifolia, a roughleaf coneflower. I was the one who recognized the difference from all the others. Since then, I also found it in Louisiana. I wrote a paper and had somebody make a drawing of the plant. But it’s professional journals, so it’s not really well known by the public.

“It’s still fascinating work to me, although I’m not going strong like I used to. I do it mostly by myself. My wife or grandkids, they don’t want to go out with me anymore. These days, it’s more like a hobby. But I plan to keep doing it as long as I can.”

— Larry Brown, 78

The post When it comes to plants, he knows his stuff appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“We recommend going organic. It really works, and it’s harmless to people and animals.

“Everybody wonders why their gardens don’t do well, why they don’t have flowers and fruit. It’s because they’re spraying all this toxic stuff on their plants and trees and shrubs, and they’re killing the bee population. There’s no pollination.

“The last few years, more people are starting to go organic.”

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