Five years ago you walked into the greenhouse on a grey February morning and asked if we needed help repotting the ferns. We did. We have needed you every single day since. I wanted to take a quiet moment, now that the spring dust has settled, to tell you plainly what these five seasons have meant to this place and to me.

You have grown into the steady center of the greenhouse — the person new hires shadow, the one who knows by feel when a flat is thirsty and when it is fine. This spring you proved it on the hardest stage we have. The rush hit us harder than any year I can remember, and you carried the whole bench through it without losing a single tray.

Zero loss in a season like that is not luck — it is the watering schedule you rebuilt, the shade cloth you insisted we buy, and the calm you keep when the carts are three-deep at the register. You did not just survive the rush. You set the bar the whole company will be measured against next year.

Here is to the next five seasons, Rosa. The greenhouse is healthier, the team is steadier, and this whole corner of Asheville greener because you chose to stay and tend it. Thank you, from all of us, for taking such good care of the things we grow — and of the people who grow them.