As one of the Home and Gardening Channel Stewards, I am one of the gardening sub-channel stewards, and as such, I look forward to sharing my love of plants and gardening with all Helium members. I am always available to help anyone who seeks help on anything pertaining to gardening and plants. I will also gladly help anyone who needs help or advice on writing to gardening titles.

I look forward to developing this sub-channel into an even more active and popular venue - both for readers and writers. I hope to widen the range of titles we have on all areas of gardening and landscaping. If anyone has titles to suggest, feel free to contact me.

I am also a member of the Editorial Advisory Board, and am incredibly proud to be part of this amazing team of people who are helping to elevate the quality of writing at Helium in every possible way. You can reach me by using the "Contact Author" link.

I have a B.Music degree from Chicago Musical College with a major in Music History and Literature and minors in Piano and Harpsichord performance. I was originally a French major and as a French major, I was initiated into the National French Honor Society Pi Delta Phi.

During my undergraduate years, I was a three time winner of the Betty Taylor Clark Memorial Scholarship. I was also an Illinois State Scholar, receiving the scholarship. I also studied German for about 2 years.

I later went on to do graduate work at the University of Iowa Center for the Book. My area of specialty is mainly the history of the book. Over the course of a year, I worked with other graduate students who, in studying Medieval Latin Paleography, were given the opportunity to work with a 13th century French Missal, tracking the provenance and reorganizing and reordering all of the quires so that the book could be rebound in an authentic historical binding.

I also spent several years studying calligraphy and bookbinding. I did some printing of my own - both etchings and block prints and a bit of letter press printing. I served as the secretary of the University of Iowa Book Arts Club for about 4 years.

Because I was required to do massive amounts of scholarly research for both my undergraduate and graduate school work, I developed a real aptitude for finding things. As a graduate student, I had a reputation that evolved out of remarks my graduate adviser made to students in one of my many classes. She informed them that if something required research, I'd find the best information, as long as it could be found. I hope to bring that to my writing at Helium, and I've opened myself up to writing to all sorts of channels I would never have previously considered. I pride myself on both the quality and quantity of research that I do for articles whenever necessary.

I am a passionate gardener with close to 30 years of growing experience. I am also a houseplant collector and hummingbird watcher. I am most interested in tropical plants and flowers and growing food crops organically. I practice organic methods of insect, pest and disease control. I also grow many perennials, especially things to attract hummingbirds.

I write under the pen name Theresa Rose, a name that was chosen to honor my two maternal great grandmothers whose first names were Theresa and Rose. I also write under my real name (Susan Klatz Beal,) or as Susan K. Beal and I have written articles as skbeal, as well.

My passion is ...

Gardening - especially tropical plants and flowers and hummingbirds and writing about those things. I'm also passionate about classical music.

I know too much about ...

Probably Classical Music and plants

My parents always told me ...

Always be honest and respectful of all people.

My childhood ambition ...

I had many..........but probably a professional musician or an international linguist.

My favorite memory ...

Marrying my best friend or playing duets with my father

Why I write ...

I love to write, I love to put my thoughts into writing and I love to challenge myself creatively through writing. If I can share some knowledge with someone, that's an added bonus.

What I am reading/watching/listening to ...

Everything I can read about gardening, Birds and Blooms magazine, CNN or MSNBC, and some classical music

My first job ...

stocking clothes in a woman's clothing store

My best moment ...

getting married for the first time to an amazing man just before I turned 50.

My inspiration ...

Everything around me..........Mostly plants, birds, things in nature!

Home & Garden > Gardening (Other) The joys of gardening

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Gardening is probably the most widely recognized and popular hobby in America. What is it about gardening that gives people so much satisfaction? Although I cannot speak for other people, I can try to articulate why I find so much joy in gardening. I happen to love plants. It doesn't matter whether they are flowering plants, plants grown for their foliage or plants grown for food. I love them no matter what they are. Nothing quite compares to the satisfaction of watching a seed that I planted germinate and grow into a mature plant. A seed planted for a food crop is somehow different, though...

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