Report From PIA – September 10
Here I am, ten days into my desire to explore how my garden is connected to everything else, and I’m already impatient. This morning I wrote down what I wanted to accomplish today, and it was an impossibly long list. According to my early morning optimism, I should have been able to write two articles, return video equipment, do a consultation for a friend, shop for groceries, update my website and make a new speaker’s promotional sheet. Also on this list was “water pots & side garden, meet Harriet, post on blog and, underlined, decide about the video.”
Apparently I thought there were three of me when I wrote those goals for the day.
At noon I’d accomplished the least significant items on that list: shopping, equipment return, and the watering, and as I walked to meet Harriet, I wondered how I could possibly deliver the “four season of conscious cultivation” I envisioned when I began this blog project.
Harriet was working at a local pottery studio, and after she cleaned up I helped her carry her things to her car. As she started to load things into the trunk, she held up a simple, sort of wavy-sided pot and said, “I brought this in today to remind me of where I started.” It was the first thing she’d thrown on the wheel, and needless to say, she’s way better now.
A reminder of where we’ve started is good advice for us all, and especially significant for those like myself who want to grow great gardens every day in all ways, preferably now. Appropriate words for me today, because I finished uploading the short video I made onto youtube. It’s so far from what I wanted it to be that I’ve been debating about leaving it there at all. It’s sufficient to say that Spielberg, Martha Stewart and the Muppets have nothing to worry about.
But I had fun doing it, and it was good to remind myself about how much fun the editing process is. Whether The Weed makes any further appearances or not is uncertain, but I’m already thinking of another video project, sans puppet.
I’m sitting on my front porch as I write this, watching the plants in the entry garden wave in the wind. I remember that two years ago October this area was a lawn. Seeing it now reminds me that goals can be reached. Today, the picture of what this garden looked like a short time ago is my reminder of where I started.
I’d better get back to that list.
Before - view from front porch
Before - the view from the driveway...
After number one,
and after number two. No lawn, new path, stairs to the veggie garden on the left and a matching step (not in this photo) on the right.
