November Garden Report

Short version: I did nothing!

Slightly longer version: I thought about doing some things, then none of them happened.

Most of the plants are gone and have been uprooted. There were still strawberry plants and marigolds, and I thought about transplanting them, but did not.

Part of that is because I have not decided whether or not to renew the plot. It almost doesn't matter with the strawberries, because I have decided that I don't want them in the ground again.

I read something about how strawberries are the worst berries to pick, and have been nicknamed the devil's berries. I didn't know about the nickname, or how passionate some people were about it, but I knew about picking them. There is no comfortable position, you get cramped and dirty, and there are always stickers and things, and the berries are more in the dirt. They were somehow also the ones that needed the most workers back when I was doing that.  (Probably just a coincidence.)

So even if I renew the community garden plot, I will change something with the berries. Whether I just put them in an urn, or use rain gutters, or hanging baskets, I have not decided yet. However, this is not a great time of year to transplant them. If I suddenly need to do it in January that won't be great either (March would probably be best), but I will have to wait and see.

The marigolds are a different story. They are annuals. Technically they should die out. They have been remarkably strong though. We are starting to get some frost, and this may be what finally sends them to rest, but their resilience has been a pleasant surprise.

I also thought of putting in a cover crop - commonly referred to as green manure - to improve the soil. It sounds like alfalfa is pretty common, though I was getting a lot of volunteer clover, so that would probably grow well. Without knowing if I am going to be using the space, it didn't seem like a good idea. Still, it's an intriguing idea. I hope to experiment with it next year. If there is one thing that growing does, it's make you believe and look forward to future years.

I promise that nothing will happen in December, and probably not in January. Instead, I will be gaining knowledge, to help me better decide what I want to do. I have four books that I want to read:

All New Square Foot Gardening, by Mel Bartholomew
Grocery Gardening, by Jean Ann Van Krevelen, Amanda Thomsen, and Robin Ripley
Founding Gardeners, by Andrea Wulf
Botany for Gardeners, by Brian Capon

Technically the first two are the really practical ones, but taking in the less practical knowledge can be very inspiring.

Reasons I might renew my community garden plot

There are points in favor of the community garden plot as well.

One is that again, it is not expensive, especially when you include the use of the water.

Another is that while I can use my yard, then that involves things like rototilling and fencing parts off from the pets, and things like that. One thing I have considered is maybe putting sections of blackberries, raspberries, and blueberries in the backyard, maybe a plum tree in the front yard, but keeping the patch for regular vegetables. I feel I need more knowledge before I can decide, so that level of planning is on hold for right now, though I will need to decide before the end of January.

And of course the other reason that I might renew is people, even though that was the primary reason I might not.

A lot of people I knew took garden patches, and I thought at times that I would see them there, and that would be kind of cool. It turned out that usually we were there at different times, and the examples of the people who really annoyed me were people I had prior knowledge of.

At the same time, there were a lot of interactions with strangers that I wasn't expecting, and they were primarily positive.

People are attracted to growing space. As I worked, people would walk by and they would look and ask questions. Children would want to help.

There is an older woman who walks in the area a lot. She doesn't speak English, so we smile and greet each other, but all we can really say is "Hi". While the garden was going on, sometimes I could also show her a squash or something. I believe she was impressed.

So there are real community aspects to a community garden, and that may be something I want to continue to participate in. If I don't, someone else will, and I hope it will be good for them too. I still need to figure it out.

Reasons I might not renew my community garden plot

This is not saying that I won't renew, but if I don't, these are the reasons why. Basically, if you are thinking that getting a community garden plot, these would be the arguments against it.

One reason would be money, but that is not a huge reason. The $35 that I would pay for the space includes water, and that is pretty reasonable. Still, I do have the use of my own yard for free.

For many people a reasonable question is convenience. That is less of an issue for me, as I can walk there very easily and have had periods where I was there daily. If you will need to drive to your plot, or even if it's a longer walk, you should be realistic about not just whether you can get there on a regular basis, but if you will.

Mainly, though, if I don't renew it will be because of people.

I have not found litter near my garden very often. While some people do ridiculous things with the combination lock, like having it face inward, or only changing one number so that someone trying to crack the combination would be able to do so very easily, I have never been unable to get in or seen signs of someone who did not have a plot getting in, so it does seem to work out. There have been two things that have really irritated me.

One was one person trimming my tomatoes without asking. No, our plots were not adjacent, and they were not overgrown to the point where they would be encroaching on anyone else's plants. She was just trying to be helpful, and I found it to be a huge violation of personal space. This is a learning experience for me, and I may do some things wrong, but that is my prerogative. Also, there can be reasonable differences of opinion on how to do some things. I told her not to do it again, quite firmly. If I ever caught her doing so again, I was going to report her, but it did not appear to come up. Still, that was a souring experience.

There are other ways in which people are inconsiderate. My plot was really only close to one water spot, which had two faucets. I had gotten into a habit of using the same one, so every time I watered I would connect to that tap, water, and then disconnect. Then someone in another plot started leaving a large hose attached to that tap.

That did irritate me, but okay, there is another one there, and I can be flexible. Then the same people started leaving a hose attached to the other tap as well. Again, these are the only taps that are anywhere near my plot. Every time I went to water, I had to decide whether to undo one of theirs (and these were big hoses where that was kind of a chore) or to move one of theirs to use it for watering my own, or how to work that out. It's just rude. Actually, the time the one knob came off in my hand was while I was trying to remove a hose that someone had left attached.

Perhaps I am overly irritable; I can't rule that out. But basically if I decide not to do the community garden next year, it will be because of how annoying and inconsiderate people can be. If these people sound annoying to you as well, then it is something to think about.

Drawing Time

Right now I am working very hard on establishing myself as a professional writer, and I am also reading a lot, because there are a lot of things I want to know.

Reading and writing are both things I enjoy, but there are times when it gets fatiguing. I am on vacation this week. I have not yet had a vacation where writing was a real option when traveling, though it could still happen. I have had many vacations where I have taken along multiple books, and made progress there. However, this week I am doing neither.Instead I am going to take along some paper and pencils and do some sketching.

When I decided to start drawing, one thing that I felt instinctively is that there was a different kind of energy to it, and that it was a good thing in my life. Lately that has been reinforced.

Part of that has come from recently finishing Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. The introduction to the fourth edition spends a fair amount of time going over the left and brain right functions, and how while it is easy for the left brain to dominate there are valuable things that we get from the right brain. The book focuses on how to bring the right side to the forefront, and that is a valuable thing.

The other part came from an article I read recently:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/13/coloring-for-stress_n_5975832.html

It turns out that coloring helps the right and left hemispheres work well, because it combines the logical activity of filling in spaces with the creative activity of choosing colors. Also, it is relaxing.

So, I think I am making good vacation choices here. There are a lot of activities that children are instinctively drawn to that adults give up, and that's a mistake.

Have a good week!

The worst meeting ever

It has been a few years now, but I was once in a really horrible welfare meeting. I had a different meeting that could have been difficult recently, and I may find that I have a lot more meetings in my future, so this seems like a good time to review.

There was more than one thing that made it horrible, and only some of those were in my control. Let me give some background.

It happened while I was in the singles' ward, which is important for the initial concern.

There was a sheet that they had going around Relief Society that reminded the sisters that if they needed a blessing that the proper order would be to ask family members, or their home teachers, or if that didn't work they could ask the Elders' Quorum President, and there were slips with his phone number.

I understood why they were doing this. It was really common for people to want the attention of the Bishop, and he always had a long line outside of his door. That note could be a good reminder that there are many people who can help you, not just one.

Another potential issue might be sisters asking the brethren that were especially nice or cute for blessings. That probably does happen sometimes, and does seem kind of inappropriate.

Anyway, I understood the reason for the note. I still didn't totally approve, because that chain consisted of primarily missing links for many of the sisters, including my family.

We do not have any relatives we can ask for blessings. There aren't that many members in the family, and of those only a few are active, all of whom are female. We have also generally speaking not had home teachers who did their job. We have had a few great ones, but more often than not, no one was coming, and so even if we would have known whom to ask, it wouldn't have been comfortable.

We have generally found it hard to ask for blessings anyway. Not really growing up with an active father probably played a part. We do know other people who have also found it hard to ask, but they have had similar backgrounds. Maybe it can be easy to ask, but for us, it never was. Having a relationship where you trust the person helped. Also if it was someone who felt a little fatherly, that could be nice.

That leads directly to the last issue with the stated options: the Elders' Quorum president was judgmental and pompous, and there was just no way I was ever going to ask him for a blessing.

I didn't need one at that time, but one of my sisters did. She was getting sick and had a lot of things she needed to do, and she felt like she needed that help. Our choices, based on that paper, were pretty unsatisfactory. She ended up asking one of the counselors in the bishopric, and he told her no, that there were other people she should ask.

I was furious on behalf of my sister, but also I was appalled. I didn't love the policy in the first place, but I really thought it was there to encourage people at the asking stage, and not that they would actually refuse a request.

So, I wanted to talk about that, but I wanted to talk about it in general terms, without casting too much blame. Again, I understood the policy, but I thought there needed to be more empathy in its execution.

The problem was that trying to talk about it generally kept everyone from getting the point. Without any names, they just reiterated the policy. Getting a little more specific about what happened, the pompous guy assumed that the "no" was because of a worthiness issue. Finally I said it was a counselor, and then he realized it was him, but then it all became about the specific circumstance, not about that there was an overall problem, which I still felt was true.

That would have been bad enough, but I was also coming down with a cold, and so my voice was starting to give out, and that meeting just sucked. I remember going home and unfriending several of the people there on Facebook, because I didn't want them seeing anything I might choose to post about that meeting.

That part was actually okay. There is a tendency to feel that you need to accept people on social media if you know them and they send a request, but there is no obligation. I don't regret any of those deletions.

I also still think that raising the issue was okay, but what I did wrong was bringing it into the meeting when I couldn't name names. I should have gone straight to the bishop with that one. It wasn't that I felt like I was slandering the counselor; but I didn't want to embarrass him or make an example of him. I didn't really want to identify my sister either. I had thought the story had enough general application that the specifics didn't matter, but I was wrong there. So some things need to go to the meeting leader before, and let him decide how to address them.

It is one reason that I remember the importance of home and visiting teaching so strongly. I often worry about whether we do enough for the sisters we visit, but a few times we have had people call us because they needed someone to talk to, and at those times I know we did something right. That's not what I am thinking at the time, because they have a need and I am focusing on that, but later I remember that there is some trust, that they do know that we care.

And we still have no priesthood holders in the family, and we don't get home taught very often, so in some ways things haven't changed very much. It's nice that we're independent, but it's nice to have people looking out for you too.