our gardens as a reference for our creative work
I've been in the garden lately - the weather is lovely here for mornings and evenings spent with fingers in the soil. I often, too often?!, ponder how my garden is like a visual reference to my creative work and to my business. Is that silly?
Here's what I mean - today I put a seed into the ground. I have hopes of what might come from it, but I'm never quite sure it will be as described or anticipated. I water and tend it, and talk to it every day. Sometimes it grows and thrives and flourishes. Sometimes, for no reason known to me, it simply pokes its little head up then shrivels away back into the soil again - failed.
Or perhaps not so much failed, but instead to become compost for the next plant that will take its place. And lessons for my future planting. Did I give it too much water, not enough maybe? Was the soil not quite right? Was it the wrong season? Should I have waited for a different moon phase to shift around again?
Was it the wrong time of year - was I hopeful for a miracle of sweet peas in high Summer. I know that sweet peas never never grow in Summer in the heat of my garden, but I also know (from now two years experience) that they need just the right amount of sunshine and warmth in the late Winter to have the strength to grow.
It sure is a tender balance with sweet peas (for me at any rate). A little like when I do something in my business - some things I plant at the wrong time. I have hopeful anticipation of a burst of ‘something’ but I know always that it’s the wrong time for that something to occur.
And in my creative work… the same. Without laying the groundwork, or putting in the early time to make sure I have the skills (the right soil), the right materials and tools and time. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how much I want something to happen in my stitching or quilting, it simply won’t if I haven’t given myself the amount of time needed for it to flourish.
Sometimes more time is all we need - for our garden, our business, our relationships, our creative work. To give it a little more space to grow. Sometimes we have to realise that we’re giving attention to the wrong patch of soil, to the wrong plant in the wrong season.
Here’s what I’m learning in my garden - and it’s making me think that I am also learning this in my business (but of course, it’s not quite as pretty and flowery in the admin end of a business):
Where the Winter sun reaches at what times of day and months of the year
Where the Summer sun starts to creep in, I have more garden bed space
What plants need more nourishing and extra tending compared to other plants. Some we can scatter in and they do their thing whenever they land, some need the right mix of soil compositions before they'll even open their sleepy heads
I should be keeping a diary and a plan - taking note of what worked last year, what time I planted things, where I got the seeds, which ones germinated more successfully.
I only just looked in my phone photos and realised that two years ago my cosmos were in full bloom already by now, this year I don’t even yet have any seeds in. Is it just that the year got away from me in an unexpected way (completely possible!)
Some things will never ever work in my garden - it doesn’t matter what I do or hope or wish or keep trying.
Some plants, and ideas, take a lot more work and helping hands than I ever expect - and that it’s ok to ask for that help too
Paying for some things - soil, new seeds, my son + nephew to build a pea trellis - is ok. While some things it’s best to work with what I have - seeds gathered from overhanging gardens, soil dug from the forest, a post hidden at the back of the garden shed
Some things are photogenic and worth sharing (showing off). Other aspects are boring - a pile of soil isn’t so exciting for others to look at.
I’m relating, in my mind, this to my business. Because I am right now deep in the depths of nourishing the soil and planting new seeds and tending to tiny baby plants, and making trellises in my business.
But I think also, you - reading this - can relate it to your creative arts / crafts practice.
Why - because you can! In my book, Mindful thoughts for makers, I actually think that we can relate a lot of things to other things. The lessons we learn in the garden are easily translated to the studio or the work room or a relationship or parenting. If we want to look into that way.
Of course, you could just put some seeds in the ground and water your garden and smile at the pretty flowers. I’m sure that would be much much easier!
What it’s continually reminding is this - I don’t have to be an expert at things. I can experiment, and make mistakes. I can plant the wrong things at the wrong time, and lose the cost / time / energy of that task. I can do this in my garden and in my business, and in my arts practice, or my creative hobby.
It’s ok to waste some seeds. It’s ok to waste some fabric. It’s ok to waste some time / money trying a new thing in my business - testing out a new online platform or email provider, perhaps.
Why is it ok? Because from all those things I take those lessons into the next step. I look at the online platform more in depth, or I ask myself new or better questions. To get to the right answer.
Is this fabric really the colour I want? Or do I actually want to cut it yet, or shall I measure one more time?
Do I really need to be trying new things right now, when instead I should / could focus on what’s already growing in the garden, what’s already on my sewing table, or what’s already working in my business?
There are no right or wrong answers - I think we’re all in an apprenticeship of life / living / gardening / creative work / business. In terms of becoming a ‘master’ at something, old wisdom used to say we needed 10,000 hours. Or maybe 7 years. Or something like that.
Have you been doing these things - actively intentionally - doing these things for this much time? Have you spent 7 Winters in your garden? 7 Summers? Watching and noting, and learning and remembering? I haven’t yet…
And while I’ve officially spent more than 7 years doing this business (about 12 years actually), I know that during that time I’ve tested different things, tried and failed and learned and re-learned. And right now I feel like maybe I’m getting to that stage of 6 Winters and Autumns, maybe 5 Springs, maybe 5-6 Summers. I don’t know.
Anyway, all this long ramble is basically to say that I am learning. Still. Always. Learning. In the evenings when I stand and water my plants, when I look at which ones are happy where I’ve poked them into the soil. In the mornings when I wake up and go searching for new buds or remove some caterpillars.
I’m learning when I take fabric in hand, needle and thread.
I’m learning when I sit at my computer and look at the business-side of my business. When I test what worked last week. When I acknowledge what didn’t work. When I try again something new.
I’m telling myself, again and again, that it might take me 3 Springs before I find the perfect right spot in my garden for my sweet peas to flourish. And while that’s 2 seasons worth of wasted seeds and dashed anticipations of those tender fragrant blooms. It’s in fact 2 seasons worth of taking note, worth of noticing and being more intentional.
And I’m learning that just because one year I have abundant flourishing cosmos or tomatoes, and a pre-teen who is happy to pose for photos. The next year there might be a drought or too much rain. Or an almost-teen too deep in her depths of anxiety. But the next season we’ll have some different flowers, and we’ll better understand her anxiety and how to help her with it.
This year I have these beautiful lavender flowering - which I have barely had before. And the rosemary in the pot beside it is thriving too. I’m not sure what I did right to these, this year, but it must have been something. Let’s hope I can replicate this again next year.
In my business too - one quarter I will far surpass my expectations of things. The next season things will slow, and I will need to tend something new to allow a different flourishing. One month I’ll make enough money to cover the other months that don’t quite cover the expenses.
Part of this is about what we pay attention to does indeed flourish. Part of this is that there truly are seasons in our garden, in our business, in our creative work, in our children’s lives, in our lives.
Part of this is letting go and knowing that it doesn’t even matter how much you learn, how solid your plans are, things still fall apart. Some things still don’t flourish. But the magic, I’ve found, is that if we pay the right sort of attention - if we’re truly noticing - then we see that other things are flourishing. They just might be a little more subtle and not quite what we had hoped for.
Like all the glorious nasturtiums and marigolds in my garden this season instead of the sweet peas.
Like the way my daughter is learning to talk about her feelings and emotions herself. And say words that we never knew existed in our family vocabulary.
Like the way my about-to-turn-16 son has a group of friends who are real and sweet and loving, and respect him for his own silly wonderful personality.
And the way our almost-6-yr-old is noticing more words even though he refuses to read his home-readers sent home from school each week.
Like the way I wanted to have written a book this past year, to see it be published (and the way other people seem to keep get another one published). But instead I’m working 1-on-1 with people to be a guide in their creative business. And how reaching or talking with one person is equally as valuable to me as reaching 100 or 1000 people.
How the world feels like it’s falling apart - with a pandemic, the worst budget-release, the fears of the US-election; but the stars are more bright than I remember, when I wake up at 2am. And I can see the planets - Mars shining brilliant red through the eucalyptus trees. Perhaps because there are less planes flying around the world and the sky is truly actually cleaner.
