Once upon a time

Once upon a time, I had a bookstore.

It was structured around the work I was doing at the time, which focused on botany, botanical art & illustration, natural history art, environmental education, and encouraging an interest in plants. The objective was to address what has been called plant blindness in the science education literature. It referred to the fact that people can tell you more about animals than about plants, and that plants exist as an invisible background to life, despite how much we depend on them.

My store was online and traveled to events like garden shows, book festivals, educational events, conferences, and holiday boutiques. It even had a retail presence inside a boutique marketplace for 13 months until the marketplace closed its doors. I loved researching books, developing relationships with publishers, and introducing the public to titles they didn’t know existed. I loved the energy of enthusiastic shoppers and exploring children’s books about plants and nature. 

I launched the store before Square was even a thing, and the booksellers' association I belonged to was in its earlier days of grappling with the online world. I loved the bookstore. It satisfied every romantic vision I had. I loved thinking on my feet, testing ideas, and doing my own version of informal science education at events. Today, instead of taking on the heavy load of inventory, both physically and financially, I direct my energy to shopping at independent bookstores in person, supporting my local store through platforms like Libro.fm, and browsing through children's books when I can.

Books about plants still pique my interest, and I continue to update the educational resource I created almost 25 years ago when I have a resource that may interest that dedicated audience. The book I can’t wait to share with you this week is one such example. This episode will mark a new approach to how I share interviews. The episode will be published here on Wednesday morning.

Let me know what you think. 

~ Tania