I’m a war baby. When I was born, my father was a soldier in Lorraine, France, a First Lieutenant in the Lorraine Infantry Division.

The building I rented on the corner of 1st South and 8th East in Salt Lake City had been standing empty for several years. Except for the patter of student feet on the floor of the apartment upstairs, the building was desolate.

Near the end of The Grass Menagerie’s third year, I received a certified letter from the Salt Lake Board of Education: The junior high school next to the shop was being demolished and rebuilt.

Permit in hand, I asked a dear friend to help me build my first greenhouse.

The years in my first greenhouse were the happiest years of my business life. Why? I had fallen in love, deeply and irreversibly in love.

Business was going but not growing. Wholesale cactus orders were frequent but small, and sometimes more effort than they were worth.

After negotiations were completed, the deeds and notes signed, and the greenhouse building permit waived, I was fired up and ready to go.

When construction of the foliage houses was complete, I went on my first buying trip to Homestead, Florida.

During the five-year interim before all of the Erickson property became mine, I had plenty of time to mull over what to do next.