About

Ever since I could talk, I’ve wanted to be a singer. I got up the courage to act on my dream, and 2 degrees and a 12 year voice teaching career later, here I am.

Being a working musician/singer is definitely not what I thought it would be. While I love it and will always have music in my life, the lifestyle is hard on my family and I’m ready to go in a new direction.

So where to look? Back to my roots.

Passions usually present themselves as a theme that has run through your life from the very beginning. So music. . . right? Well yes, and no.

All the while there were other passions that I’ve largely ignored while I’ve been pursuing singing and a teaching studio. I love to make things beautiful. I’m a Martha Stewart at heart. And I LOVE all things magazines, was a huge yearbook geek, and made a family newspaper with my cousins when I was child.

So this blog all about shifting my roots from music to blogging, and living a simpler life after my constantly shifting one. (12 moves in 15 years, anyone?) Growing some roots. . . shall we say?

I hope you’ll join me on this journey. Life doesn’t always happen the way we plan, but often it leads us to something better than we ever imagined.

I wrote the previous blurb in 2016 when I started this blog and I never could have imagined what the “better than imagined” would turn into. I debated totally rewriting this page, but decided to keep what I originally wrote so that if you are struggling in your career and looking for a change, you’ll have the courage to start taking your own steps towards a future you couldn’t have previously imagined.

In the time since then I’ve taken loads of classes on blogging and social media, applied myself, made non-negotiable blogging time everyday, and now can say that over half of my income comes from blogging. I am confident that in a year I will be able to quit teaching music should I choose to do so.

Now, let me tell you the second half of this story, the one that is related to what Shifting Roots has turned into.

I grew up on a century old family farm and was involved in gardening as soon as I could walk. My family believed in hard work and that kids were never too young to pitch in. Unfortunately (fortunately?) for me, I am an only child, which meant that I was the go-to kid for all the work that needed to be done.

I didn’t like having to help so much more than all of my friends and I often resented it. Little did I realize that along the way I was learning a lot of skills that my peers had no clue about–how to tell a weed from a vegetable, which flowers liked sun, and which flowers like shade, what order to plant your vegetables in and how and why to rotate your crops, when vegetables are ripe, how to process peas, corn, berries, and so much more.

Once I grew up and had my own home, suddenly all those tasks I resented became important life skills that I now needed and wanted to do. I also quickly realized that most of my friends wanted to start their own gardens, but didn’t have any clue how to go about it. They either lived in cites and didn’t grow up with a garden, or their parents never made them help with it.

Suddenly I became the go-t0 girl amongst all my friends who were buying their own houses and wanted to get started with their own gardens or landscaping.

And that is where this blog comes in. I hope that if you are new to gardening, you’ll find a wealth of information to help you get started. Gardening doesn’t have to be this elusive all-or-nothing thing. Start with the resources you have, and expand your garden a little each year as your skills and confidence grow.

Even though I’ve been gardening all my life, I still make mistakes along the way–and I’m not shy about talking about them! There are no perfect gardeners.

P.S. I garden in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, which is zone 3b. If you’re tired of all the gardening advice out there applying to zones 5 and up, I’m your girl!!