I grew up in southern California in a house surrounded by my mother’s beautiful gardens. I enjoyed dazzling flowers all year and took them for granted until I moved east for graduate school. What a shock to experience bone chilling cold and months of frozen ground with nothing in bloom.

Despite the lack of balmy temperatures and lush foliage, I fell in love with Massachusetts. I started my career as a social worker, met and married my husband, had twin girls and settled into a wonderful life.

Breast cancer was always in the back of my mind. Thirty-five years ago, at the age of forty-four, my mother was diagnosed, treated and went on live a very active life. I was not surprised when a routine mammogram revealed I had it too. It was in the same breast as my mother’s had been. I was forty-four. My children were six. My mother and role model wrapped her arms around my family. My girls were too little to really grasp what was going on, but Bubbie constantly reassured them that she had the same disease as mommy, lost her hair and got better.

I had eight months of chemo followed by six months of radiation and drug therapy. It was a long haul, but I focused on things I could control. I celebrated small victories. My husband, my mother, my kids, my friends and Sophie, our new puppy, helped me through it. She knew something was not right and took it upon herself to watch over me. She was my constant companion. I have an extra special place in my heart for her.

My garden was always something I was going to get to but never did. Hope in Bloom gave my yard and me a new beginning. I will always be grateful to the volunteers who lovingly pruned, weeded, created my garden and helped me identify existing plants. They gave me a gift that will last a lifetime.