Along the Lavender Path is my shop's original name when I started it over 25 years ago. It was a tittle from a special last page essay or poetry section in the old Victoria Magazine. The illustration of a garden gate with lavender color flowers growing all over it just connected with my passion for flowers. I was a floral designer/ landscape designer in love with flowers, especially anything purple. I compare my life to a growing tree, each new shoot grows out from the main trunk, building upon the strength gained from what came before, but a new branch has it's own new traits and directions to follow. I went from floral design to millinery design, collecting vintage millinery, restoring , redesigning and then creating jewelry out of vintage hat flowers. A parallel branch shooting from the roots is my antique collector gene, at age 6, I had started a bone china teacup collection which to this day I still have my original childhood collection. From craft shows to antique shows, spreading out my collection of wares to include vintage clothing , accessories, vintage linens and textiles, jewelry , adding in floral china, teapots , and silver flatware with floral patterns. The life-giving sap flowing through my branches was my passion for flowers, purple flowers: lavender, violets, pansies, lilacs and iris. So the name of my shop has never changed, the flowers are always present, yes there is a path of lavender leading to the shop front door, and the shop is filled with antiques covered with beautiful flowers. We have been shabby roses and flowers forever. Dried flowers and herbs sold by the scoop perfume the air. Vintage hats covered with flowers are still adorning anything I can hang a hat on.
Oh yes, the other branch coming from the roots of my tree is a love of books, that limb is life-long strong, resulting in a used bookshop with over 20,00 books, a tree full of blossoms of knowledge, adventure, fantasy, design, cooking and of course, a large collection of gardening books.