Hmmm....where to begin? Ever since I was 16 I thought I wanted to be a botany professor. I escaped from Redding, CA and headed to UC Santa Barbara to study botany. After getting my degree, it was off to the University of Washington, Seattle for graduate studies. A couple years into it, I looked around at the professors and their world and decided that it was not for me. (I’d met my partner-to-be Rob in a botany class at Santa Barbara, and after a year of long-distance romance, followed him to graduate school in Seattle. We got married a couple years after and celebrated our 30th anniversary, which is pretty amazing, considering everyone in my family is divorced!).
While living in Seattle I'd learned to spin, weave, dye, batik, make paper, bind books, make quilts.... I've always liked to know how things are made and where they come from. Meanwhile, I worked at a variety of jobs until 1987, when we sold most everything we owned, bought shiny new red mountain bikes and one-way tickets to Australia, and headed out. We rode our bikes around the world, covering more than 20,000 km over the course of 20 months, touring through some 20+ countries along the way (including pedaling up and over seven 17,000+ ft. passes in the Himalayas!). It was definitely one of the most challenging and best things I've ever done.
After the trip we settled in Berkeley. I’d written a book, Spinning Designer Yarns, before we headed out and it was published while we were traveling. On returning I found that I’d become a minor celebrity in the fiber arts world, and wound up teaching spinning workshops around the country over the next couple years. Around this time I also began painting with watercolors to create some much-needed art for the older house we'd bought. Then I got a real job, a corporate job, as Director of Store Operations for The Nature Company (a large, nature oriented retail chain, which later became Discovery Channel Stores). I worked there for five years, but knew that my soul would shrivel up and die if I didn't get out! Outside of my regular duties, I had created some jewelry and t-shirt art for the company. My products sold well enough to give me the confidence to quit and become a commercial illustrator. I created art for notecards, t-shirts, store displays, toys, posters; and eventually got a contract to illustrate a cookbook for Chronicle Press.
Still, we felt that we needed to get out of the rat race. During an on-the-cheap car camping trip through Baja California, we found a wonderfully remote piece of paradise on the Sea of Cortez called Cabo Pulmo. We bought a cactus-scrub covered lot there, not even knowing how we would make the rest of the payments, yet alone spring ourselves free to live there. It all worked out over the next couple years as Rob came up with some great new products, enabling us to profitably sell his business. We made the move to Mexico in 1996 and built a charming little house to live in and a precious little art studio for me to play in. I made cloisonné enamel jewelry, ceramics, and sold prints of my paintings right out of my studio. I also created a wonderful garden with succulents and native plants appropriate to the desert climate.
In 2005 I started Diane's Desert Garden Blog, mostly to learn about the blog thing, and to share my garden with all of those people in the world who couldn't come see it in person. Through the blog I got a contract to design and install a large garden for a client with a new beach home north of us in Baja. I had to propagate all of the native plants for the project since local nurseries did not and still do not sell native plants.
We love Baja, but the desert climate began to feel restrictive and the pace of development in southern Baja worrisome, so we starting exploring the real tropics of Central America. Around this time we sold our original Baja home, and designed and built a new one on our vacant lot next door. The project took two years, and it's truly a work of art and a labor of love. We operate it as a vacation rental when we’re not there—El Encanto de Cabo Pulmo.
In early 2008 we made the trek to Costa Rica in our truck/camper, discovered the jungly wilds of the Osa Peninsula and lived there most of the year--Rob, especially, was enchanted. In 2009 we traveled to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico and I became enchanted. 2010 finds me living in San Miguel de Allende--I just couldn't leave. Rob will be spending time in Costa Rica with extensive trips to San Miguel. See my Blog for the latest!