To get a good yield from a crop you need to sow the seeds quite thickly at first and thin them out later. If you only sow a very few seeds here and there about the garden, chances are they will be eaten by birds or bugs well before they ever get to maturity.
The same could be said about creative efforts. Sometimes its necessary to really concentrate on a few areas of intense activity rather than spread your creative seeds all over the garden in the hope that something will sprout.
Right now my creative energies are going into my artwork and my Dialog Visual blog and I am not able to put the time I would like to into my garden or this blog. Consequently I have had to reduce my garden maintenance to the minimum to keep it alive and I will not be posting on What We Grow in the immediate future.
As the days get longer and the weather warmer, I will resume my gardening tasks once again and I hope to bring What We Grow out of hibernation once again even if not in its present form.
In the meantime, I want to thank my fellow creative gardeners for their support on this journey so far and wish you all fruitful planting! Hope to see you on Dialog Visual soon :)
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
16 Jan 2011
Seeds Scattered Too Thinly
27 Oct 2010
Creating Space
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| Fighting for space |
Don't get me wrong, I'm still to committed to the idea of a traditional country garden or 'potager' where flowers and vegetables rub shoulders in a riotous display of blooms and produce; I still believe that in the hot summer months, ground cover is the best way to protect the garden from evaporation; and I'm still equally committed to turning over as much of our plot to perennial plants - both flowers and veg - in order to minimize the amount of clearing and planting that needs to be done each season. Despite this, however, I know I'll always reserve some parts of the garden for annual crops because – I have to admit – that I do enjoy the process of clearing a space and planting those little jewel-like seeds full of promise into the ground.
This clearing of space has its parallel in other parts of life. Inspired by my cyber friend Dan Goodwin's 'Shedding Project' and spurred on by my partner's insistence that I do a little less, I've been getting down to a bit of clearing out both physical and psychological over the last month.
What's amazing is how much stuff there is, both in our habits and our household, that we simply do not see because we have grown so accustomed to its presence! In the same way that it feels like the rocket patch has always occupied two thirds of one side of the garden's growing space and there's really need to change it – until we realise that there just isn't any space to plant beans this year – so ingrained habits and assorted possessions come to take over our personal and mental space leaving no room for new ideas or fresh experiences.
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| Room to grow and expand |
It's been refreshing to see the humid earth appear from out under the greenery and to sprinkle in a bit of manure, gently fork it over, and add a layer of recently harvested compost from our bin and so ready it for planting this season's crops. Equally its been revitalising to designate Saturdays as to-do-free days to spend with my partner and to wake up on the other days to a do-able To Do list that fills me with enthusiasm as well as opening the way for new projects to blossom. Read More......
10 Oct 2010
No Waste in the Creative Garden
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Some rights reserved by London Permaculture |
We've just harvested a good number of large buckets of compost from our rickety makeshift compost heap. There is nothing quite like the joy of reaping such riches from a process that takes almost no effort at all - just a stroll down to the garden with the kitchen scraps and the leaf fall from the patio, an occasional desultory stir and a bit of water in the summer and, voila, free topsoil full of nutrients!
Contrast this with the constantly irritating process of collecting all the waste supermarket packaging that we seem to collect despite our efforts to the contrary followed by the reward-less trip to the nearest recycling point with bulky and unwieldy parcels (no kerb-side recycling here!) of a product that probably should never have been invented in the first place and that will be with us for millennia to come (i.e. plastic in all its myriad shapes and forms).
A major benefit of an organic garden is that it is a closed-loop system that has no waste products, everything sooner or later rotting down and returning to whence it came. Its useful to think of our creative lives in the same way.
All to often we feel we have 'wasted our time' when we make something that doesn't fulfil the criteria or expectations we had in mind for it but this is erroneous thinking because, as in the garden, everything we do in our creative lives contributes to the whole: A tiny corner of a painting we don't like sparks an idea for another work; a misplaced brushstroke sets us to wondering how it would be to paint a large canvas with broad, dripping brushstrokes; An unfinished novel that has lain in the drawer untouched for years, is recycled into a series of short stories which get published; A week spent blocked with a work in progress eventually leads to the realization that we are bored with our process and we need to experiment with new techniques...
Our minds and psyches will function very effectively as virtual compost bins for recycling creative ideas if only we will stop inhibiting the process by our negative thinking and dismissing out of hand every aspect of our creative lives that doesn't seem to fit nicely into the 'product' category. Like the making of compost in the garden, this process requires no great effort on our part; We only need a little diligence and patience and in a short time we will be rewarded with buckets of rich ideas with which to dress our creative gardens and help them grow. Read More......
19 Sept 2010
Lemons
Original image by André Karwath aka Aka via WikiMedia Commons
"When life gives you lemons, you’re allowed to feel sad, frustrated and annoyed before you decide to squeeze them on your salad, plant the seeds in your yard, or ask your friend’s mother for her iced tea recipe."
I'm a sucker for a garden analogy as you know and especially when it's a humourous one, so I couldn't resist this one from Havi Brooks Read More......
12 Sept 2010
A Time for Everything
In the garden, there is a specific time for everything: for planting, for harvesting, for pruning, for fertilizing...And if you follow the biodynamic system and adjust your practices according to the moon, then these times are further subdivided into planting times for root vegetables as opposed to those that grow above ground, for trees that fruit as opposed to those that don't, etc etc.
An awareness of these natural cycles is something that we have grown further and further away from as we have changed to living in cities with 24 hour a day electric light and artificial heating and cooling systems and yet we continue to be governed by these ancient patterns although we are not always consciously aware of it.
Read More......
5 Sept 2010
Mysterious Bugs v Fragrant Blooms
As if this weren't disturbing enough, the normally robust snapdragons have been covered by what appears to my untrained eye to be some sort of rust and the indestructible hollyhocks have been so extensively attacked by the beetle that always eats their leaves, they they all but gave up flowering altogether!
Read More......
15 Aug 2010
The Ecology of Creativity
"The creative process is an ecology that depends upon the full spectrum of our resources"
Shaun McNiff, Trust The Process — an artist's guide to letting go (Shambala, 1998)
There's been some really lively and interesting discussions going on of late on my favourite creativity forum my favourite creativity forum. One like-minded soul started talking about how she felt that her different interests and projects fed into each other — allowing her to find enthusiasm for one when another flagged and that way she could keep moving. This made me think that our creative life is really like a mini ecosystem — such as we might strive to build in a permaculture garden — where each element (be it plant or structure) ideally has forum multiple functions: The principle function i.e. the reason we are growing it (or have sited in a particular place if it is a structure) plus at least one secondary function such as to promote or help with another aspect if the garden. This might be by deterring insects from damaging another plant, providing shade etc.
If we look at our creative ecology in the same way, we can see that the same might be true: A blog can serve not only to showcase our work but to connect with people by showcasing theirs; It may even be that we write our blog when we have reached a lull in another creative activity and the writing serves to clarify where we need to go next in the other project. Similarly, we can use a technique that comes relatively easily to us to create a piece that acts as a psychological counterbalance to the struggle we might be having with a more challenging piece; the first acting like a fertilizer for our confidence, keeping it boosted when the second one is threatening it.
All this stands directly opposed to the modern urban myth that dedicating yourself exclusively to just one discipline is the only way to be 'serious' about your creative work and yet you don't have to look far to find incredibly successful artists who are also musicians. Or poets. Or novelists.
Of course, there are only so many hours in a day and if we are blogging we are not painting and if we are painting then we cannot simultaneously be composing...and yet what the one robs of the other in terms of time, it so often gives back in the form of enthusiasm or inspiration.
If our creativity is an ecology, then having more than one type of plant in the garden means our landscape will always be varied, challenging and stimulating and the produce we yield will feed us a healthier, more balanced diet!
What does your creative ecosystem look like? Click on 'Comments' below the post and share your thoughts!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Read More......
8 Jun 2010
What do Agriculture and Education have in Common?
Seems I'm not the only one who likes their green analogies and has seemingly unconnected subjects swimming around in their head at the same time!
Listening to a fascinating talk on new strategies for education with Ken Robinson the other day on TED (http://www.ted.com/) he not only began the talk with a reference to climate change but summed up by saying that we need an 'agricultural model' of education to replace the industrial one we have inherited from the 19th century.
Well worth a watch: http://tinyurl.com/3xc7o2o
Read More......
31 Mar 2010
If you want to grow beans, its no use planting potatoes
Sounds obvious doesn't it? If you want to grow beans you don't set about planting spuds. You dig over your ground, buy your bean seeds and make some nice little holes for them, pop them in, watch the rain water them and wait for them to grow. A couple of months later you have some lovely little bean plants coming along nicely, fixing nitrogen in your soil and promising a bean feast.
So if all that is so obvious, how come we don't apply that to other areas of our lives?
How come we are perfectly capable of convincing ourselves that in order to paint a painting, write a novel or compose a sonata, we first need to check our email, reorganise our desktop, sort our books by spine colour, do the weekly shop, spring clean the bedroom and shower the dog?
Of course, we are procrastinating and that's easy to spot when its a case of having spent the entire morning in gmail. However, its another thing entirely when it comes to doing the weekly shop because the weekly shop NEEDS DOING. There's no getting round it. We'll go hungry if we don't (unless we can live only on the bounty of our veg plot – which in my case, at least, is unlikely) and so its perfectly justifiable and reasonable. Or so it seems. What isn't justified and reasonable is doing it WHEN we had promised ourselves to work on the painting, the novel or the sonata. Just as it wouldn't be reasonable to go down to prepare the bean bed and come back up to the house having cleaned out the shed, planted some potatoes and weeded around the plum tree (unless that's where we were planning on planting the beans).
So next time you find yourself cleaning out the fridge or grooming the cat at 10am, stop yourself in your tracks and ask yourself whether that was really the appointment you had with yourself this morning? Or were you supposed to be planting beans?
23 Mar 2010
The Compost Heap
The compost heap is the heart of the process of our creative recycling. For creative work, we need to be constantly taking in information in order to later tap into it later as a source of inspiration and material. But in order for the information and stimulation that we take in to be transformed into our final product or artwork, an almost alchemical process needs to take place. In 'Drawing on the Artist Within', Betty Edwards calls this process the period of 'incubation'.
26 Jan 2010
CLEARED SPACE - Why Emptiness Allows Growth
"If all space were filled with matter, nothing could move… A type of space can also be filled with all the assumptions you have made in your life. If you go back and remember how your structure of understanding (of what is going on in this world) was built, and how those assumptions have affected your life, you see that a different set of assumptions would have led to a very different life. The ability to understand that you can change your life by changing your assumptions is a kind of “movement.” Allowing for possibility that alternate assumptions may also be useful … emptiness allows for personal growth."
From p67 of Movements of Power by Bob Klein
I did clear various beds in the autumn ready for February planting but as a consequence of my temporary abandonment, those beds – that at other times of the year are overflowing with luscious veggies – have been gradually squatted by nettles.
Read More......
16 Dec 2009
26 Sept 2009
Preparing the ground
29 May 2009
WEATHER - part 2: Aloe Vera in the Snow
PLANNING FOR THE DOWN TIMES IN OUR CREATIVE CYCLES
Snow is highly unusual where we live but the winter was already proving very cold and with a bit of foresight it wasn't that difficult to see that snow was a strong possibility. With some advance planning we might have been able to save more of the aloe vera plants - either digging them right up and over-wintering them in pots inside or looking for some way to create protective coverings over them to stop the jelly inside the leaves freezing and stacking up mulch round the base to keep the roots warm.
Likewise with our own creative cycles, we have to know that there WILL be times when our confidence is at a low ebb or our productivity slows almost to a standstill and be ready with strategies to protect our fragile creative egos so that they survive the winter ready to bloom again when better weather comes. These strategies are very similar to those we use for our delicate plants - protection, feeding and sometimes a gentle pruning.
Protection means a controlled environment where we feel safe. For some that means the privacy of our journal or our studio where we can doodle and play; for others it is the supportive environment of a group of fellow creatives (on-line or round the corner) or even a combination of both.
Feeding
There are many ways to feed and fertilize our creative souls which vary hugely from person to person. For some it is time spent out in nature, for others it is out on the town. For some, immersing ourselves in other people's creative work does the trick, for others the exact opposite is true and what we need is to just be still and listen to our own creative voice. A rest or a holiday when we don't expect anything of ourselves creatively may produce the desired result or it may be frenetic activity or a tight deadline that gets our creative juices flowing again. Only we can know the answer to what cures and heals us and fills us up and its up to us to determine the correct recipe and feed it to ourselves.
Pruning
When the health of a plant is threatened sometimes it is best to prune it back so the small amount of energy it does have isn't dissipated in trying to repair dying branches. Likewise when our creative energy is at a low ebb, it is often beneficial to cut back on our expectations and responsibilities, identifying the projects that we could stop working on right away with no serious consequences and so freeing ourselves to concentrate more consistently on just a few things.
Watching our own creative cycles we can learn to recognize the danger points and plan for lapses in our creative confidence and productivity in the way we plan for extreme weather conditions in our garden. Its no use just hoping for the best and leaving vulnerable plants out in the snow!
Next week: Transplanting to a bigger pot - but only by a waning moon!
20 Apr 2009
HOW TO VISUALISE YOUR CREATIVE BLOOMS: Or what GTD and the picture on your seed packet have in common
Have you ever planted some seeds straight into the garden without really being sure you will be able to identify the plants when they are grown? Then, a few months later, you go out to look to see whether the seed is coming up only to find the whole patch covered with weeds. Or are they weeds? Could it be that some of those unrecognisable sprouts are actually the plants you are waiting for?
This scenario has a lot in common with David Allen's GTD concept of "What does DONE look like?" Its not that we need to know literally exactly what our creative projects will look like when they are finished but we do need to define their genus by setting goals and maybe parameters for the project.
One of the biggest reasons creative people get blocked is because we start out every piece with the wish that it turn out a 'masterpiece' and as soon as it begins to look like this might not be the case, we block.
Its not too difficult to recognise what's happened: We've set ourselves unreasonable expectations because we have no easy way to recognise when our project is completed, not that unlike planting those unfamiliar seeds in the middle of that patch of weedy soil. Fundamentally this has the same effect as not setting any parameters or goals at all.
How much better then, when we set off to plant those seeds, to diligently weed the soil first and then to carefully put aside the seed packet with the photograph of the fully-grown plant on the front so that when the seeds start to mature, we've got a photo to help us tell them apart from any stray weeds that still come up in the same patch.
Likewise, if we set ourselves specific goals within our creative projects - e.g. I am going to paint a picture in colours I don't normally use - and resist the temptation to clarify these goals with unrealistic expectations - such as that it will be a 'brilliant' picture - then its a lot easier to see when our particular plant has matured and bloomed. We know when we have finished our project and can enjoy a sense of success at accomplishing our aims.
5 Dec 2008
Whenever I come across an article that isn't about nature or gardening but uses one of them as a metaphor, I just have to go and take a peek! Here's a few worth sharing that I've come across this week:
In Rotating Creative Crops, multidisciplinary artist and creativity coach, Cathryn Hrudicka talks about the effects of mixing different creative disciplines in varying sequences and the effect this has on both her clients and her own creative output.
Again on the subject of creativity but with a his own gtd slant, in Do You Have an Idea Garden? creativity and productivity coach Charlie shares his system for capturing article writing ideas.
Last but not least is not a blog post but Heather Blakey's intriguing advent calendar, The Rookery where each day a new bird flies in to sit in the tree and tell their story. Each 'bird' is a valued member of the Soul Food Cafe, an online writing group for artists and writers from around the world.
16 Nov 2008
Join the Largest Movement in the World
I'm trying desperately to find the time to explore more of what's going on at one of my favourite sites, WiserEarth because every time I visit, I find myself so stimulated by the broad range of discussions and information on offer that I end up bookmarking more things to revisit than I can ever hope to catch up with in a lifetime.
WiserEarth - according to the site itself - is "an online community space for NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and those that support their work: businesses, government agencies, funders, social entrepreneurs, students, organizers, academics, activists, scientists, and other concerned citizens of the world. (i.e. everybody - ed). WiserEarth provides the tools to help these 'communities of action' find each other, make connections, share resources, and build alliances."
The vision for a WiserEarth originally came from environmentalist, entrepreneur, journalist, and best-selling author, Paul Hawken who is the author and co-author of dozens of articles and papers, as well as six books including Growing a Business, Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being, and Why No One Saw It Coming and The Ecology of Commerce. In The Ecology of Commerce he introduced the 'comprehensive outcome principle' - taking account of the entire result of an event or process to all parties, not just the immediate participants - which was to be extremely influential in the eventual emergence of the concept of the ecological footprint and triple bottom line standards for sustainability.
Since then he has dedicated his life to changing the relationship between business and the environment, and between human and living systems in order to create a more just and sustainable world. His work includes starting and running ecological businesses, writing and teaching about the impact of commerce upon the environment, and consulting with governments and corporations on economic development, industrial ecology, and environmental policy.
One of the things that makes WiserEarth so unique is that it functions both like Wikipedia, where any registered user can create and edit content, as well as like FaceBook where you can use social networking tools to connect with others. Because of this interesting mix of approaches, there is a lot of really fascinating content to be read and discussions to take part in for anyone interested in environmental and social change.
It was WiserEarth that first led me to define WhatWeGrow as an 'Ecopsychology' site, as I had never heard the term before, and one of the areas that fascinates me most is the stimulating discussions going on about the relationship that exists between our minds and bodies and the environment and societies within which we live and the connections that exist between these and cultural and educational practices. If this sounds like your cup of tea, integralecoawareness.org are offering a three day course in Berlin in December which promises to 'open pathways to empower the individual to creatively engage in change' through a very broad range of methodologies ranging from somatics/bodywork, to permaculture and nature awareness. Unfortunately I won't be able to make this one but I'm looking forward to feedback on how it goes :-)
Paul Hawken credits a Native-American for teaching him that the division between ecology and human rights is an artificial one, that the environmental and social justice movements addressed two sides of a larger dilemma; that the way we harm the earth affects all people, and how we treat each other is how we treat the earth. If you want to find out more about Paul Hawken, about ecopsychology or about the largest movement in the world, why not join me over at WiserEarth?
Sources: WiserEarth, Wikipedia and Integral Eco Awareness.org
9 Nov 2008
NATURE AT WORK - part 2: Eternity
"Consider a flowering plant: its new leaves stretching open, reaching for the life-giving sun; its roots anchoring deep into the earth, drawing sustenance into itself. As if prompted by an invisible imperative, it forms its blossom and develops its fruit. In time its flower magically unfolds, inviting response to its sensual delights of color and scent. Nature, in turn, participates in pollinating and thereby furthering the development of the wondrous seed hidden within the fruit. Soon, after this co-operative celebration of life, the plant concentrates the total of its energies into the ripening fruit and maturing seed. In the end, as the plant declines and rests, perhaps terminating itself, the seed detaches and falls to the earth, continuing the perpetuating mystery of existence…Herein lies the secret of eternity."
Hexagram 32, Enduring — The I Ching Workbook by R.L. Wing
Drawing by WildCherry
5 Nov 2008
NATURE AT WORK - part 1: Joy
"Within a fertilized cell or the seed of a plant lies a pattern for the fully mature organism. Given time and proper environmental conditions, a person, tree or zebra is formed. The growth of that organism as the unraveling of its inner patterns is what I mean by the term “joy.” “Joy” in this sense implies nature proceeding along its natural cycles, for the seed is but one part of an endless series of cycles—tree, seed, sprout, tree, seed, etc."
Taken from p79-80 of Movements of Power by Bob Klein
Image courtesy of Stockxpert
NATURE AT WORK - part 2: Eternity
18 Sept 2008
How To Be An Organic Creative
What we’re talking about here is creating in the way that’s most natural and organic to you, finding the ways of creating that work best for you and your unique creative make up.
There are 5 key elements to being an Organic Creative that you can consider:
- The times of day you create best: We’ve all heard expressions like “I’m a real night owl” or “I’m not a morning person”. How do these apply to you? What times of day do you feel most alert, most energetic and most creative? Do you feel best in the early mornings but only ever get down to creating late at night then wonder why you have no energy or enthusiasm? Think Organic Creative and use the times when you feel naturally higher to do your creative work, even if this means adjusting other activities a little to fit it in.
- Your optimum creative periods: As well as the time of day you create, it’s important to experiment with the optimum length of time you feel most creative in. Maybe 30 minutes of creating 4 or 5 times a day works well for you and keeps you fresh and flowing? Or maybe you prefer to immerse yourself in 3 or 4 hour sessions at a time. Find what helps you be most creative, what feels most natural for you.
- Your most conducive creative environment: Do you prefer to create in isolation and silence? Or do you find it helps having certain music on, or particular lighting and colours around you? Maybe your best writing comes in bustling cafes or in the heart of nature? Being an Organic Creative doesn’t mean creating only in natural surroundings like meadows or woodland. Again it means finding the creative environments that helps you be at your most freely creative and flowing.
- Organising your creative materials and equipment: Even in an environment where you feel highly creative, it’s wasted if your materials and tools aren’t accessible. Everything needn’t be perfectly arranged by colour, size, and date of purchase, but having your materials organised so you know what’s available for you to create with when you need it is important. Same with your tools and equipment. Find what works for you and don’t spend hours hunting for materials or tools when you could be creating.
- Keeping your inspiration and motivation high: You know better than anyone what inspires you to create, what motivates you to want to rush to take up your pen or brush or keyboard. Be aware of the kind of stimulations that keep your creativity fresh, and regularly take on more. This might mean exploring books, places and groups of people. Notice what works for you, be the Organic Creative.
- Try different things.
- Notice what works best for you and do more of that.
- Notice what doesn’t work for you, do less of that.
“Creativity Coach Dan Goodwin is the author of “Create Create!”, a
FREE twice monthly ezine for people who want simple and powerful
articles, tips and exercises to help them unleash their creative
talents. Sign up right now and get your FREE “Explode Your
Creativity!” Action Workbook, at http://www.CoachCreative.com
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