Fern Glen Essays
Meet the Muck Maven
by Judy Sullivan

One of my personal goals is the eradication of the "brief biography" so often required for lectures and classes. However, I've been asked to include one as the first installment of this new weekly web offering. If you make it to the conclusion, I'm sure you'll concur that the natural world is far more fascinating than my life. After all, I have no intrigue, suspense, secret trysts or cannibalism to offer in my personal history. Not yet.

My current profession grew from my childhood roots. (WARNING: shameless puns will accompany every future submission.) When my mother bent her back to hoe rows of tomatoes as long and straight as a Texas highway, I would inform her that I had pressing duties in my own garden. I made my announcements with bravado...and my departures with alacrity, adopting a plot of nature that would take me as far from the parental presence as possible. My stubby legs would march to the outermost corner of our acreage, where I would stand with feet apart and arms akimbo, surveying the progression of nature's blooms and seed heads in my wild "garden." I instinctively knew that weeding a plant would deprive me of the opportunity to sit and appreciate it.

No doubt you'll shrewdly surmise that the operative word in that last sentence is "sit." Nevertheless, for both children and adults, sitting can be a golden gateway. I became enamored of things tousled, fascinated by the idea of orderly parts comprising a disorderly whole, and found peace in freedom of form and diversity of expression.

Fast-forward a quarter century. My brief stint in the world of the corporate office had been an unqualified disaster. Pantyhose gave me hives and I wore more coffee than I drank. As for my efforts at transcribing numerical data, let's just say that they provided my coworkers with hours of painstaking overtime. At long last, I thought that I'd finally found my niche as the manager of a tasteful retail nursery and landscaping center. However, never name as "niche" what is, in reality, a toehold.

A chance conversation led me to IES. Both my interviewer and I assumed that I would continue the great gardening tradition and devote my career to lawn and landscape cosmetology. Ahhh...but that was before I discovered the Fern Glen.

What richness! Here were ferns nodding from every nook, creeping in every cranny. Here the sharp edged sedge and pungent spicebush. Here nature waged battle against a remnant of invading botanical bullies. Here my heart stopped and found itself at home. I was transformed into Judy Sullivan, Mud Magnet and Maven of Muck. Champion of the Unsung Native. Botanical Sister of Mercy. My destiny the creation of a Native Plant Program. Once again I stood, feet apart and arms akimbo, celebrating freedom of form and diversity of expression. I invite you to join me.

Questions, comments, or other feedback to Judy Sullivan.