The No Excuses Project: Moving towards a perfect garden

I’m trying to be realistic with this one – there’s only so many projects that can fill up the available free time.  The goal of the no excuses project is  to stop putting off the possible, not how to become a superhero! While a garden is very important to me, it’s not a critical component of anything else.  So here’s the new plan:

1. Relatively quick and non-muddy tasks will happen in the evenings every day that they’re needed. This would be watering, fertilizing, slug bait, etc.
2. Leaving a block of time on the weekends for everything else: weeding, pruning, transplanting and the like.  I’m not going to even try to do more than two hours here and if it rains, it can skip a week without being a problem.

That’s it – nothing fancy or grand, just a basic plan to move things along.

Holding myself accountable

So here’s where I’m at:

• Photography – some research into improving the website and the like, but did not pick up the camera this week  – I need to work on that
• Losing weight – meals are going fairly well and some exercise has happened but not what I committed to myself

All in all it’s been kind of a mediocre week and I’m striving to be more mindful.

Next week: the goal of true love and where I’m getting in my own way – since I found myself making excuses not to address this topic next, it should be interesting…

Technorati Tags: getting organized, lessons from the garden

The No Excuses Project: The imperfect garden

Although I have a secret yearning for a lush and perfect cottage garden like the kind you see on estate travel shows I also  know that’s requires more patience than anything else. At the same time there is weeding, fertilizing and pruning that needs to happen to get it there.  Getting the bare minimum done happens but along with that I discover that I’ve been using excuses to avoid doing more – every time I think a task will take four or five hours I find that I’ve accomplished most of it inside an hour.  How much more would happen if I estimated the task accurately? Even though my garden isn’t critical to work or love I consider it a key part of my home environment – a messy garden is no different than leaving clothes on the floor. It’s unsettling and leaves me feeling critical of myself. It should be something that is joyful, not guilt inducing.

Most definitely my number one excuse is ‘it will take a long time’ followed by the timing isn’t right – usually because it’s raining or I will need to clean up to go somewhere later.  Not a long list of excuses but powerful ones in my personal arsenal.

Next week – the strategy to being a better caretaker

Holding Myself Accountable

So how is it working?  I think I’m doing a little better:

• Photography – I’ve got a rough draft of my first book essay, which is 600 more words than existed last week
• Weight & Exercise – while I haven’t fit in the exercise consistently I’ve done some and I’ve got the month’s food prepped in the freezer. Now that meals are just a microwave away I should free up that 30 minutes in the evening for moving

Technorati Tags: common excuses, lessons from the garden, self-talk

Lessons from the garden – community

We seem to be living in an increasingly disconnected age, or maybe that should be more electronically connected.  Most of us don’t even know our neighbors anymore. Partly that’s because of computers, but long commutes and real-estate prices are just as much to blame.  In just the five years I’ve owned my house I’m on the third neighbor in the house next door and for sale signs seem to be an annual crop across the street.  One neighbor even asked me if I travelled a lot because she only saw me on the weekends when I was out in the yard – I wasn’t travelling really, but my commute was so long that I left the house and returned in the dark.  Even if it’s only on weekends or in pots on an apartment balconyu, gardens can be a wonderful way to be a part of your community.

For one thing, the new neighbors or the long-standing ones that you’ve never met are much more likely to stop and  say hi and strike up a conversation if you’re out in the yard then they are to walk up to your front door and knock without a reason.  We are far more leary of interupting these days than our grandparents were, I think.  Gardens open things up for more casual conversations, offering a variety of safe topics on plants and colors, not to mention compliments.  You might be surprised at what you consider to be overgrown with weeds looks stunning to someone down the block.  Offer to share some seeds or starts and you’ve got an instant community project that will withstand houses trading hands.

Technorati Tags: friendship, lessons from the garden

Perspective can be tricky

Every few years I get myself up before dawn, pack my camera bag, and head out to the tulip fields in Skagit Valley. I don’t go every year because I don’t want it to become so repetitious that I fail to see in new ways. Even in the early hours before anything is open, there are other photographers about and people trying to avoid the traffic rush, but it’s rare to hear another voice. There is something about being in the quiet fields in the early morning that lends itself to deep thinking and slightly quirky analogies.

The scholar Joseph Campbell described three groups of people in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces :

• Those who heed a powerful inner call and slog through life’s misfortunes in pursuit of it
• “The multitude of men and women [who] choose the less adventurous way of the comparatively unconscious civic and tribal routines”
• And “those who know neither an inner call nor an outer doctrine whose plight truly is desperate”

I think it’s fair to say that the last group contributes a fair number of cases to the family court system. Too often in trying to help, we speak from a single point of reference, similar to looking down tulip rows to the horizon.  There’s no getting around the fact that the curve of the earth combined with the nature of the human eye will create the optical illusion that parallel rows appear to angle towards each other to a single point on the horizon.  It seems like an inevitable destination. The illusion is so powerful that even knowing this, most of us are still a little startled if we walk straight down the row into the field only to find that it doesn’t finish anywhere near the landmark that originally marked that point. A person standing ten rows away will see the rows come together at a different place although possibly with the same erroneous landmark. The reality is that each row ends in a different spot and that whatever the goal, both parties are probably going to have to step over some rows to achieve it.

I don’t know how many photographs of tulip rows marching towards that vanishing point are taken each year but it’s a lot.  I can tell that because almost all of the other photographers have their cameras safely attached to a tripod at chest height. It easily could be that they are seeing something that I’m not, but I can guarantee that they aren’t seeing what I am because it’s impossible to do so from that kind of vertical and horizontal distance.  Unfortunately there are a lot of photography books that imply that a tripod is what distinguishes a ‘real’ photographer from a tourist and it quickly becomes habit along with avoiding the mud (some of those unconscious civic rules Campbell referred to.) But sometimes getting your knees dirty and breaking a few of the unspoken rules can lead to a whole new perspective.  Suddenly the tulips aren’t diminutive and sweet but giants reaching for the sky or an entire universe of water droplets on a single petal. In the same way, some kids need the rules of organized sports while others could be more positively influenced by watching Star Trek reruns and others still by being given a camera. Trying out different perspectives may open new doors and new solutions.

Technorati Tags: hero saga, lessons from the garden, optical illusions, perspective