Outskirts Press, INC.

One Man’s Retirement transition from Accounting to Gardening

Randall Collins had spent all his life applying practical skills to achieve results. As an accountant, he was used to organization, analysis, and responsibility. After he retired, he found himself with a gap in his life; he wanted to be productive, but he’d had enough of being answerable to a boss or a client – he wanted to work on his own terms. Like many people, he turned to gardening and found it to be a compelling, fascinating world. For him, it was a perfect solution – the meticulous, observation-focused mindset he’d developed as an accountant translated beautifully to the process and science of gardening, while the art and creativity required to nurture and grow ornamental plants allowed him to explore a new side of himself. But at the heart of this memoir is Collins’ greatest challenge: how to outsmart a foraging white-tailed deer who saw the garden as his personal gourmet salad bar. A warm, relatable story of how one man came to terms with retirement and nature, Stop…and Smell the Mints is both delightful and educational.

Plants in the mint family share some common traits. They generally begin with square stems, simple, opposite leaves and loaded with aromatic volatile oils. The stems on some genera begin to grow round as they mature. The flowers typically have petals fused into an upper lip and a lower lip. We will be referring to "flowers" many times in this book and just so we all are on the same page let me first give the taxonomy definition and then my own. Taxonomists say a flower is that "reproductive portion of the plant, consisting of stamens, pistils, or both, and usually including a perianth of sepals or both sepals and petals". My layman's definition is "a flower is that colorful part that makes us happy - flowers always make people better, happier, and more tuned to our sense of sight and smell; flowers are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul..."