Hi Fellow Students!
I also have taken the other two Botanical Illustration courses (and this one a few times!) and really enjoyed and learned a lot from them - am looking forward to working with you all and learning from you. It really is a lot of fun working with the different media and also challenging in a good way. Somewhat more than a beginner is how I'd classify my skill level.
I spent the 1990's living in Rockville MD -- small world!
There were times in my life when I lived in the country and had a wide variety of wild plants to observe, but now I'm in New York City and rely on the surprising number of plants that grow here next to sidewalks and in parks and also the blooms in bodegas and florist shops. New York City even has an online map of all its trees, id'd by species! Taking these classes has led me to closely observe the changes in the trees over each year and over different years.
All the best,
Carol