"I thought you was a city girl!"

"I didn't know you was no country girl!" my friend, the art school janitor, yelled across the hall to me this morning. She wasn't heckling me; it was a statement of admiration and understanding (loud though it may have been)- and when she said it, I felt good.

She and I bumped into each other at Alachua County Farm and Feed about a month ago on a Saturday morning. She was buying collard starts, I was buying lettuce starts. She didn't recognize me in my pony tail and gardening clothes and apologized to me the next week when she saw me at the gallery, explaining that she was so surprised to see me there that she forgot my name. Since then, whenever I see her, she asks me about my garden and I ask about hers. We discuss what is working and what isn't, which bugs are the worst and how planting under the full moon was the best thing we could have done for our fall crop.

Today her smile and stories transformed my day and my attitude. Today I am proud to be a country girl.