The first time I was here in Mexico with Tom and Evelyn and I met Heriberto, the man I married. We had a little thing going on. We really liked it here so we came back up the Baja peninsula rather than going up through the mainland to Texas.

I wanted to see Heriberto.

I met Heriberto on a picnic. Tom said: “I know this nice engineer at the agricultural experiment station. He just got here last year and he is a really nice guy. He speaks good English. We should invite him to come along.”

I said: “OK, sure. Why not?”

So he came along and I met him on the picnic. We dated. Well, I guess you’d call it dating in Todos Santos in those days. We went to the beach. We went to the one restaurant in town. I had probably only been here in Todos Santos for a week when I met him.

I came back to Todos Santos in 1976 and I get buried that year as well. He was a good reason for me to come back. I knew he was here. I knew we were probably going to get married.

I went back-and-forth between Mexico and Canada. I went back to Canada and worked so hard. One time I met Heriberto in Mexico City. Heriberto was well-educated. He had lived in Chicago for a while. It was a unique romance. He was, and still is, very theatrical. He’s very talented.

When I got here and we got married we lived in a house on the corner of that we rented in La Cachora. That was a big job. While he worked at the experimental station we started a plant nursery.

He had already started the nursery, but I had nothing to do and I’m a person who goes to work every day. So I needed something to do. So he showed me how to propagate plants and I made thousands of cuttings.

So we pretty well had to sell them.

He would collect plants as he traveled around the world or around Mexico. Sometimes I would go with him. We introduced a lot of plants to this area such as the Norfolk Island pine, the mahogany tree. We brought a lot of seeds and seedlings back from other countries and introduce them to Todos Santos.

So I really get into the nursery thing. I thought it was the best thing I had ever done!

In my years since I had lived on the farm I had gone to the shi-shi private school, and then gone to the city for nursing school, then worked in the city. But I had never really gone back to my farming routes. Nor did I know that I had farming genes in me.

But man, when I was set loose in a nursery there was nothing I couldn’t do!

I just really loved it.

We were the only ministry in Todos Santos. The only nursery. People would come from La Paz and Cabo San Lucas to get all their mystery stock. There weren’t any other nurseries. We were it.

So I did record business on weekends. On a weekend I would sell $500.00 worth of plants, and that was a great salary because I got to keep all the money. It was fun.

When our son was turning two Heriberto got promoted, and we moved to La Paz for two years. We rented an old house there and remodeled it. It had a big back garden with a humongous 200 year old tree that covered the entire backyard. So I sensed it in and made it into a nursery showroom.

On weekends I would come to Todos Santos to propagate plants and sell and tell the guys what to do. Then I would fill my Volkswagen van with nursery stock, take it back to look Paz and sell it out during the week in my little showroom. It was an awesome business.

During this time I had a toddler, and I was also pregnant with Amy. I was getting tired. It was fun but it was a lot of work. It was all outdoor work.

When I had plants in my condo in Toronto I’d change them out every two months because I’ve just kill them.

When Heriberto suggested that we started near three I thought: “nursery? Me? Are you crazy? Do you want me to ruin your business?”

Heriberto and I got divorced in 1996. So legally, the marriage lasted twenty years. But we weren’t together that long perhaps only about twelve years.

The kids never really helped in the nursery. They used to play their pin they would graze there. I had a big garden with lots of fruit trees. These were my little bohemian kids!

At some point they made another career change. I think my marriage was waning.

I got into real estate through the back door. Back then, tourists would come to Todos Santos. Not a lot, but enough to keep me busy. They would stay at the hotel and think: “oh, what a fabulous place. I’d like to buy something here!”

But no one could speak anyone else’s language. They’d come and get me to explain it all to them. I just kept getting busier and busier doing this. At one point I thought: “this is too much. I should make it a business!”

Where Heriberto lives now, we had a plant nursery showroom. I took over the front room and made it into a little real estate office. The first shingle I got to hang out was Century 21. I got to know the first broker for Century 21 in Cabo San Lucas.

He said: “I’d like you to be our representative in Todos Santos. You have your own sign out there, but I think with the Century 21 sign you will do better.”

So I did that for a while and I did better. But I didn’t make as much money. Century 21 just did not know how to work in Mexico. They didn’t get it.

So I became independent again and the situation continued to evolve. I worked for another broker. I learned a lot from the second broker that I worked with; all the ins-and-outs of real estate.

That’s the problem when you have a worker like me. When they learn a lot they want to go out on their own. So that’s what I did.

I started doing real estate in about 1987 or 1988. My kids were still small. I’d have to make all my lunches for the kids. I was already a Mexican citizen; I think I did my Mexican citizenship in about 1985.

I said by-bye to Canada.

In those days you could have bought the whole town for $100,000.00. It was wild and woolly. People didn’t understand real estate. People were always nervous about leaving copies of their paper work with me. I was educating the public who lived here on what they had to do to sell a piece of property, as well as educating people about bank trusts and blah blah blah. There was nothing written about any of this.

People had to have implicit faith in what I told them. Most of them did. To get anything notarized was a big trip. We had to travel to La Paz for three hours on dirt roads to get there. Things were a big deal.

I made enough money that I thought it was good, but I don’t know how I did. In those days, however, we owned powerhouse, I owned my car, and we owned our property. I didn’t have any need for a great deal of money.

Today, however, I make in two sales when I used to make in two years back then. It’s nice. I’m glad I grew up with the business.

Back when I was a satellite office for the Century 21 office in a Cabo San Lucas, Letty had a meeting every week at 7:00 AM. I’d have to leave at 5:30 AM to get to that weekly meeting. He had six or seven agents down there, but I was the only agent up here until John Ambrose came on board.

I had to belong to the multiple listing service because I was part of the Century 21 office. So I consider this my education. In real estate. I really worked hard and learning everything I could. I seem to do that when I get involved in things. I like to learn. I dive right in, get all the details, and memorize them.

It was fun but it was hard work having two small kids and running the nursery at the same time.