The Tale of the Little Girl

Once upon a time, there was a little girl.

And for a very long time, that little girl thought of herself in basically one way: a nerd. An awkward nerd, at that. She had a few interests. She liked sports. She loved to read. But overall, she thought of herself as a fairly simple little girl.

Then the little girl grew up and went away to college. And at college, she discovered that she liked swing dancing. And ballroom dancing. And Latin dancing. She also discovered a much wider world of books to read, which was probably inevitable.

Then the little girl became a young woman and went to law school, where she continued reading—although somehow she actually managed to increase the amount she was reading while simultaneously attending law school, which probably should have been an early warning sign.

Eventually, the little girl graduated, became a lawyer, and discovered that in addition to books, she actually rather liked going to the gym. So the little girl became a gym rat.

Then she discovered blogs.

Naturally, she started one to record her thoughts about all of the books she was reading. That became The Bluestocking Guide.

Then she decided she needed somewhere to say all of the other things rattling around in her head, so she started a personal blog: Life, Less Brooke Would Be Ordinary.

On her thirtieth birthday, the little girl decided she wanted to learn how to knit. This turned out to be dangerous. She became rather good at it rather quickly, started knitting everything in sight, and—because apparently every new hobby required its own website—started Tell Me a Yarn.

Then, while buying yarn at the local craft store, she wandered into cake decorating classes.

As one does.

Before long, the little girl was baking and decorating cakes and seriously wondering whether perhaps she should become a cake decorator. Obviously, this required another blog. Thus, The Vintage Cake Cottage was born.

Then the little girl bought her first house. The house came with land, which meant she needed a garden. And somewhere along the way, she discovered something rather surprising: She wasn’t nearly as bad at gardening as she had always assumed. In fact, she was pretty good at it. So naturally, she started The Vintage Gardener.

Eventually, the little girl also began to suspect that being a lawyer was perhaps not all it had once been cracked up to be. She needed an exit strategy. And after years of growing plants, collecting plants, reading about plants, talking about plants, and generally finding increasingly elaborate excuses to acquire more plants, she decided to start a specialty nursery. That became Peonies, Petals & Poseys.

And somewhere along the way, the little girl took up dancing again. Because apparently there is always room for one more thing.

So, after all these years, the little girl has finally come to the conclusion that perhaps she was never simply an awkward nerd who liked sports and books. She was—and remains—a reader, a lawyer, a gardener, a knitter, a baker, a dancer, a business owner, a collector of hobbies, and a woman with entirely too many opinions.

Which is probably how her brain got addled in the first place.