From the time I was a young child I loved the outdoors. My mother and I, we enjoyed

gardening together. She instilled that in me, in appreciation for all plants as

they are living things.

I knew from a very early age that no matter where I would end up in life,

I would always make sure to surround myself with a living, breathing garden filled with flowers, trees, plants, and vegetables.

My parents owned and operated a dairy just west of Escalon, and I was

I was at an age that I was there helping out as soon as I was at an age that I was able to

and I loved every minute of it. I was born for this life and none of it bothered me this dairy farm life the mess the

mud the manure the smell none of it bothered me I just wanted to be there surrounded by the things

and people I loved most in this world my brother I, we always had a good time out there on the dairy.

We knew exactly how to make our own kind of fun out there. It was a perfect place

for us to be raised absolutely perfect

But life does not always go the way you think it's supposed to go.

Sometimes things just don't work out the way you had planned. Things happen, life happens. Things go wrong. Maybe you saw them coming, or maybe it was some kind of

unseen force. Whatever it was, it intervened. It changed things for me and my family. My parents

decided their marriage was no longer a thing they could manage.

My brother and I, we were still really young, so looking back upon that time, maybe we didn't quite understand the changes that were going

on in our lives.

We went from being on the dairy every day to being on the dairy, only on weekends.

My mom moved us to Modesto, California,

and that would be the place that I would call home from then on.

If anything good were to come of the breakup of my mom and dad's marriage,

...