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Reclaimed Gardens Nature inspired with upcycled and repurposed materials 🍄🌿 Committed to being plastic free and wasting less

One of the most devastating aspects of living with autoimmune disease and chronic illness is the way it limits my hand m...
10/08/2026

One of the most devastating aspects of living with autoimmune disease and chronic illness is the way it limits my hand movements, and by extension, my ability to work in mediums that require holding a paint brush. 

As I examine the body of work I’ve created today – the new mediums I’ve explored and the nature artworks that were literally birthed from those limitations – I feel gratitude for the version of me that let herself grieve what was lost, but never gave up the thing she cherished most: creating. 

If you are someone whose health has changed your capability or capacity to engage your passions with freedom, you are not alone.

Sending you my love and as you navigate what is now and what is next with courage and hope. 

❤️

This year, someone found my stationary in a Brooklyn shop and reached out for a custom wedding project. When we realized...
09/29/2026

This year, someone found my stationary in a Brooklyn shop and reached out for a custom wedding project. When we realized that we not only shared a wedding date, but also that we are both artists, we decided to trade.

I created seeded paper wildflower name tents for her wedding (pictured here), and she designed a custom poster for mine. 

I have grieved many times over the way capitalism clouds creation, pushing us to commodify every one of our skills and relationships for monetary gain. 

Choosing to trade is a quiet but powerful act of rebellion, excavating the systems that box us in to create more space in which connection is our primary currency. 

Last week, I told an out-of-town friend that the Durham August mornings start off cool(ish) but quickly creep to cooking...
09/22/2026

Last week, I told an out-of-town friend that the Durham August mornings start off cool(ish) but quickly creep to cooking temperatures by afternoon.

If I haven’t shared this personal tidbit yet, I should now: I don’t thrive in the heat 🫠

If you’ve ever lived in the South, you’ve probably shared a parking lot conversation cursing days like that throughout the seasons: mornings that start with coats, drift to tank tops, then swing back to sweaters.

I’ve also cursed this about life: thinking I know what’s needed to brave the days, then having to pivot again. I sometimes feel like a revolving door that hasn’t yet figured out what to let in and keep out to stay alive and well.

But I can’t know what’s coming, and neither can you (damnit!).

All we can do, moment by moment, is ask, what do I need and what can I share? And I have to believe, it will be enough.

After Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953, the USSR entered a strange, brief thaw - censorship loosened, just slightly, and pe...
08/27/2026

After Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953, the USSR entered a strange, brief thaw - censorship loosened, just slightly, and people who had spent decades reading the “wrong” books started to want them again.

Anything that “disparaged the Soviet order or appeared as anti-Soviet propaganda” simply had not been published. So people started making their own publishing houses: by hand.

They called it samizdat - self published. Writers and readers hand-coping art and literature, passing them along, knowing the risks: severe punishment, imprisonment, worse. 

Samizdat didn’t just get forbidden novels into people’s hands — it’s how an entire generation of Soviet readers first encountered the Silver Age poets, many of whom the state had simply erased.

I think about that erasure - and the quiet, stubborn refusal to accept it.

A poem, hand-copied at 2am and slipped to a neighbor, doesn’t look like resistance. It looks small. It looks like nothing a government would bother to fear. But they did fear it. That’s the part I keep sitting with.

As I reflect on the clandestine, underground network of these humans, I’m reminded that there is often - if not always - a way forward, as long as we are brave enough to keep moving.

After Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953, the USSR entered a strange, brief thaw - censorship loosened, just slightly, and pe...
08/27/2026

After Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953, the USSR entered a strange, brief thaw - censorship loosened, just slightly, and people who had spent decades reading the “wrong” books started to want them again.

Anything that “disparaged the Soviet order or appeared as anti-Soviet propaganda” simply had not been published.

So people started making their own publishing houses: by hand.

They called it samizdat - self published.

Writers and readers hand-coping art and literature, passing them along, knowing the risks: severe punishment, imprisonment, worse. 

Samizdat didn’t just get forbidden novels into people’s hands — it’s how an entire generation of Soviet readers first encountered the Silver Age poets, many of whom the state had simply erased.

I think about that erasure - and the quiet, stubborn refusal to accept it. A poem, hand-copied at 2am and slipped to a neighbor, doesn’t look like resistance. It looks small. It looks like nothing a government would bother to fear.

But they did fear it. That’s the part I keep sitting with.
As I reflect on the clandestine, underground network of these humans, I’m reminded that there is often - if not always - a way forward, as long as we are brave enough to keep moving.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve accidentally snapped a stem on a prized plant (by which I mean, any of my plants). ...
08/11/2026

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve accidentally snapped a stem on a prized plant (by which I mean, any of my plants). I usually wince, stare forlornly, move on. But last time it happened, I sat with it. I looked at the mangled edge. I wondered what was happening in there.

Turns out - a lot. When a plant is cut, whether it is a leaf, stem or root, its cells sound an alarm. And almost immediately, the plant responds by activating its own internal “clean-up crew.” It removes damaged cell parts and brings everything back to balance before the wound can do more harm. 

I couldn’t stop thinking about what that looks like for us. How do we heal? It’s an age-old question, one that has been studied for as long as we’ve been on this earth. And, as always, learning more about the life of plants has given me a few clues: 

1. Be honest about the wound.
2. Know your “clean-up crew,” aka your plan of action for when a cut is made (mine is creating or being in nature).
3. Ask yourself if anything needs to be removed. Is there something I need to stop, alter, or remove from my life to grow in health? 

Happy healing, friends. 🌱

It’s UNSHOP August! Do you want to purchase something right now? Yes, same. We move through life with lists of things we...
08/06/2026

It’s UNSHOP August! 

Do you want to purchase something right now? Yes, same. We move through life with lists of things we want, and sometimes I wonder if each new line adds a little bit of weight on our shoulders. If you are in the process of learning to navigate when to shop vs. unshop, here are a few questions you can ask yourself: 

• When did I find out this item or offering existed? 

• Will it fill a gap that I actually often need filling - or is it a gap I’ve just been told I have? 

• Will it add significant beauty to my days? 

• Do I need it brand new, or can I find it second hand?

• How many of these exist in the world - is this one-of-one or one of thousands? 

• Am I willing to wait or work for this? If it won’t arrive in a week or less, do I still want it? 

• Can I borrow it from a friend, the library, or another community resource?

It’s UNSHOP August! Do you want to purchase something right now? Yes, same. We move through life with lists of things we...
08/06/2026

It’s UNSHOP August! 

Do you want to purchase something right now? Yes, same.

We move through life with lists of things we want, and sometimes I wonder if each new line adds a little bit of weight on our shoulders.

If you are in the process of learning to navigate when to shop vs. unshop, here are a few questions you can ask yourself: 

• When did I find out this item or offering existed? 

• Will it fill a gap that I actually often need filling - or is it a gap I’ve just been told I have? 

• Will it add significant beauty to my days? 

• Do I need it brand new, or can I find it second hand?

• How many of these exist in the world - is this one-of-one or one of thousands? 

• Am I willing to wait or work for this? If it won’t arrive in a week or less, do I still want it? 

• Can I borrow it from a friend, the library, or another community resource? 

On finally having room to grow 🌱
07/30/2026

On finally having room to grow 🌱

The Pacific Yew taught me about falling sideways.This month, I learned something new from a different kind of plant: a f...
07/30/2026

The Pacific Yew taught me about falling sideways.

This month, I learned something new from a different kind of plant: a fiddle leaf fig that won’t branch.

In plants, there’s a hormone called auxin. It’s produced at the very tip of the dominant vertical shoot and travels downward through the stem — quietly suppressing every lateral bud below it, ensuring the plant pours all of its energy upward, toward the light.

The plant isn’t choosing this. It’s being chemically instructed to grow tall at the expense of everything it might have branched into.

I’ve been sitting with this.

How often have I let my own version of auxin — the metrics, the milestones, the pressure to keep producing and progressing — quietly suppress the lateral possibilities?

The detour that turned into a body of work.
The slow project with no clear outcome.
The season of rest I kept postponing in the name of momentum.

Here’s what the plant scientists discovered, though: when you remove or interrupt the dominant tip — through careful pruning, or a small notch in the bark — the suppression lifts.

The lateral buds, which were there all along, simply waiting, finally have room to grow. And what emerges isn’t a weaker plant.

It’s a fuller one.

I’m learning that sometimes the most generative thing we can do is make a cut. To let go of the upward trajectory long enough to ask: what has been quietly waiting to grow?

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