Who am I & why read this?

I first came to Hawaii in 2009 after working nonstop since 1989 running my landscape design/build company, Cottage Gardens, in northern New Jersey (metro NYC area). The 2008 recession really kicked my ass hard - right when we should have been taking off as a business after almost 20 years of building a reputation for quality creative work. I got an email in early fall from someone on Maui about "woofing" (a work-exchange program) and I thought "What the heck? You haven't done anything except work for two decades, you never go anywhere that isn't for work, and no one needs you from November 15 - February 15 (I did not do snow removal). Go!" So I got a cheap round-trip airplane ticket, turned the heat down in the big old Victorian-era house I lived in, and went. The minute my feet hit the tarmac in Kahului, my brain exploded. "Pat. This is the botanic garden of the world. 365 days a year you can grow anything." That began a love affair with these islands, their culture, their plants, their mana. I would go home each spring to work for pay and return each winter to work to learn. Eventually, it wasn't just winter. Numerous times I changed my flight date back because there was that one more experience I needed before I returned. The final unravelling of the fraying rope that kept me tied to my half-century of East Coast life was the election of Donald Trump in 2016. So returning from Maui in 2017, I finished up whatever outstanding landscape projects I had, sold the house at a loss as quick as I could, packed whatever I thought I needed into a shipping container, drove my F-150 across the United States to California, and put it on a boat and me on a plane. I went to Big Island, knowing no one here, because I knew there was affordable land for poor folk like me to make a start. The first day I found a cottage rental in Fern Forest and I liked the habitat. I found 3 acres and bought it with the cash on hand. Then I went to Oahu to finish the higher education I had started nearly 50 years before. After 18 months, I had a BA in American Studies. I tried 1 year of graduate school in Landscape Architecture, decided that was a waste of time and so I returned to Big Island. I am now starting the third and final act of my life by creating a garden here that preserves the native vegetation, removes the invasives and introduces some of my "Cottage Garden" style into the mix. This blog will tell you all about the unfolding of this experience. I hope you will subscribe and listen to my story as it unfolds. You will receive emails whenever new content is published! Mahalo for taking the time to read this!