In the winter of 2003, the property was a landscape of neglect. Where the 50-foot Cat-erpillar Topiary now breathes, there was only a weedy jungle surrounding a tired 50-year-old house. But I was in love. All I saw was potential. The house and garden had good bones — hardwood floors, brick chimneys, and wavy-edge cedar siding; curves, slopes, and terraced grounds. The transformation was not an overnight shift, but a twenty-three-year journey: reclaiming the earth, training wisteria vines, and planting the first seeds of the Estuary. And while over two decades is a significant chapter in a human life, it remains a mere heartbeat in the deep time of this landscape which was forged between sixty and forty million years ago.