Hi, and welcome. I’m Rebecca, and in the Society for Creative Anachronism, I’m known as Lady Ailis inghean Uí Riagáin. If you’re not familiar with the SCA, it’s a large historical‑education community where people study and recreate different parts of pre‑17th‑century life. My role there leans toward digital stewardship and research, which lines up well with the work I do outside the organization too.
If you’ve ever wondered how someone ends up studying early botanical history, growing orchids, keeping bees, and running digital infrastructure for reenactment groups all at the same time… well, you’re looking at it. My work has always lived at the intersection of practical systems and long‑running interests, and this page is a simple way to share what I’m working on and why I enjoy it.
Feel free to explore; everything here connects in one way or another.In a world full of noise, flowers are the ones still speaking quietly.
I’ve always worked in the space where structure and curiosity overlap. My background is in information systems and digital stewardship, but I’ve also spent years studying early botanical history, growing orchids, and reading the old herbals that shaped how people understood plants. This page is where all of that comes together — a place to keep track of the research, the growing projects, and the community work that fill my days.
A lot of what I do sits between two areas: the technical side of managing information and the historical side of understanding how people described and used plants centuries ago. Those two things might seem unrelated, but they rely on the same habits — paying attention, keeping good records, and building a structure that makes sense over time.
My orchid cabinets use modern environmental controls because consistency matters. My research leans on early herbalists and botanists because their observations still help us understand how these plants were viewed long before modern terminology (or technology) existed. Using both approaches together works well for me: use the tools we have now, learn from the people who came before us, and let both inform the work.
This is the main hub of my research. I grow a collection of orchids — more than sixty at this point — chosen because they appear in early texts, carry interesting folklore, or have a place in the history of European botany. I’ve spent a lot of time comparing old descriptions, translating passages, and figuring out how these plants were understood in different eras.
All of this becomes part of The Satyrion Chronicles, a multi‑volume project that blends historical research with the practical experience of growing the plants themselves.
I also keep bees. It’s a simple setup, but it connects well with the historical plant work I do and gives me another angle on the environments I study.
I manage the websites, build event sites, and maintain the archival repositories that support our reenactment communities. On the technical side, that means creating managing and organizing digital records, as well as keeping the tools running that preserve event history and organizational memory. It’s practical work, but it’s what keeps our shared history structured, searchable, and available.
The research I do is supported by a straightforward approach to environmental management, paired with a lot of behind‑the‑scenes automation. Each enclosure is treated as its own small system with specific needs, and most of the tracking work is handled through tools I’ve built over time.
- Climate Automation: Smart controllers monitor humidity, airflow, and vapor pressure deficit and adjust conditions throughout the day.
- Water Details: All irrigation water is distilled to a true zero‑PPM baseline before nutrients are added, which keeps things consistent and avoids issues from modern additives.
- Data Logging: Growth phases, fertilizer cycles, and environmental changes are recorded so I can track patterns over time.
All of this information feeds directly into a set of Google Sheets workbooks I use to manage my orchid inventory. The system started small — just a simple spreadsheet to track repotting dates — and grew as the collection grew. Over time, I added more sheets, more structure, and eventually Google Apps Script to automate the repetitive parts.
Now the workbooks handle everything from plant records to watering logs, and most of it updates itself. The dashboards on my website pull from those same sheets, so the charts and summaries you see there are generated automatically from the live data I’m collecting.
The goal is simple: keep the plants healthy, keep the records accurate, and let the automation handle the busywork so I can focus on the actual research and growing.
- Associate in Applied Science: Computer Information Technology
- Associate in Applied Science: Healthcare Informatics
- Associate in Applied Science (General Concentration)
- Guilford Technical Community College
Author, Volume I: The Binary Root (The Satyrion Chronicles)
A study of early European orchid folklore, botanical lineage, and the evolving cultural understanding of the genus
Orchis.