Here's a beautiful #grownostr plant story.

I own a botanical garden in NYC that I built as a victory garden during the Covid-19 pandemic as a volunteer, which overlapped with my quarantine time after being poisoned by lethal gas in my BK apt.

I still run it, though now it's a smaller project.

I have some big supporters who are Persian. Sometimes I miss exchanging with Persians, as I have my own family from Iran as well. They introduce me to an array of herbs from Iran & I grow it in the garden. The day got even more beautiful, as it always is in the NY summer & they're teaching me how to properly grow begonias.

I love cultivating rare & exotic plants so begonias are an untapped market for me...

In exchange we spent so much time talking about what my visit to Costa Rica was like. Extremely hot. Very active. Techie. How I got there through the internet.

Owning a botanical garden, you meet all kinds of people from all walks of life. The most crazy experience was being invited for a meeting with the EPA in DC to consult about Central Park. I never got to it, but all of that toiling the land, growing the community comes straight back to me in the form of pure love & home made food.