Go Big or Go Bust: Day 173 (a lesson in less-is-more from the garden)

I'm not sure if you've been paying close attention but I recently thinned out the lettuce.  Well, in fact, I only thinned out some of the lettuce, not because I've nailed balance in life but because the garden is only so big and there were no more empty rows to transplant to. 

I hardly made a dent in thinning out the row. 

I'm working on *time management* and *impulse control* so that I might experience the luxury of not being jammed up and constantly rushing.  This means fighting my tendency to the all-or-nothing in planting, in scheduling and in basically every area of my life.   

In the old days, I'd be on twitter for fifteen hours straight or packing so many different things into a day that the only possible outcome would be to be anxious, behind schedule by 10 AM and feeling (if not actually) inadequate. 

With my new discipline, I make up a list of what I'd (unrealistically) like to accomplish today. (If you wanted a visual image of this list, look to the hedge of lettuce, above). 

Next, with a cold heart, I put a star beside only what must get done today.  An image for the starred jobs might be the heads of lettuce which I transplanted to another row.  Usually it's only the starred things which get transferred to an 8 x 11 piece of paper and assigned to one or more thirty minute blocks.  This is not an easy moment as the fraction of what I want to accomplish which makes it onto this schedule feels paltry, it feels like what I should knock off before lunch.  But day after day, it's turning out to be pretty much all that I can actually accomplish in a day.  I seem to remember that the recommended eighteen inches between heads of lettuce also seemed like a crazy waste of space. 

I'm taking inspiration and hope from the example of the transplanted lettuce.

Look at the ones (on the right) which were transplanted out of the row and given enough room.  And look at the poor little lettuce on the left (in my right hand) which is jammed up and still suffering from the gardener's 'too much ain't enough' mentality. 

Both pictures were taken today.   All lettuce was planted at the same time.

Go Big or Go Bust: Day 164 (on going BIG ... and on limits)

I'm not sure if you caught the pictures of our large and over-crowded garden and the gentle suggestion by a friend of a friend on facebook : "All things in moderation."  Who knew that the garden would be a training ground for the next phase of The Louise Log.

lettuce, the BEFORE

lettuce, the AFTER   (You can't see this but these plants are four times the size of those in the BEFORE picture.)

Being new to gardening, I don't know how others deal with the good luck of having too many seeds grow into plants.  Last year I just went with it.  It's true the yellow squash got moldy from a lack of air, the dill and mustard greens went to seed before we could even get to them and the cucumbers ... forget about the cucumbers.  They were so numerous that we couldn't cope.  Even the local food pantries began closing their doors when they saw us coming, bags bursting. 

So when it looked like a similar scenario might be unfolding, I broached the subject with Mr. Green of thinning out the seedlings.  As usual, he was quick and decisive: "I’ll never do that.  It’d feel like throwing out … babies!"  I realized that I was going to have to take responsibility here.

And so I did.  I faced off with that part of me that wants to do more than is possible, the part that's both overly thrifty and greedy, that wants to cram too much into a day, too much into a garden, and ultimately wants to delay looking squarely and decisively at what is possible.  I surrendered and thinned out the lettuce. 

The issue is limits.  In the garden, it's the limits of physical space within the garden fence.  With The Louise Log it's much more complicated, there are all kinds of limits. 

I'm grateful to my friend and colleague Mhairi Morrison (star and creator) of the wonderful show Feathers and Toast for writing this beautiful description of a crisis of limits (falling behind schedule) I know too well.

"The temptation would be to go into next week as a chicken and flap around madly trying to do everything that I have been putting on hold for months but instead I shall focus on the eagle and soar above it and remember that the chips will fall where they will."

You might want to watch an episode of her wonderful madcap show.  It's purportedly a cooking show but I'd call it more like I Love Lucy meets new age philosophy.  There's even an episode on 'being the eagle'. 

Mhairi Morrison in an episode of Feathers and Toast