How To Think Like A Farmer

"Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience." Ralph Waldo Emerson..

After an appointment late this summer, gardeners are essential workers in Georgia, so far, during the pandemic, I stopped by a friend's home.  We had lunch on the veranda before walking the garden.  Fruit trees to site, and a decision about a pair of dying maples to be made.  

  

Pic, above, here.

As lunch was ending, she began a sentence, stopped, and said, "I must remember to think like a farmer."

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A thought giving statement.  No time to take it further, we had the garden to walk-talk-choices, then schedules separating us.

 

Pic, above, here.  Thrift stores have glass containers, above, and roadsides have plenty of stems.  For your new year or to close out this year, give yourself this bit of happiness, glass pot/stems.  Brought inside, you'll know why.  Trust me.  You'll know.

I don't agree with Emerson's quote, at top.  Nature's secret is deeper/wider than patience.  Nature is a constellation of acts, with myriad more parts, each pivotal, changing by the minute.  Parts needing attention, on Nature's timeline, not ours.  This-Is-How-It's-Done, teaches Nature.  Not an aspect of this, separate from Love.

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As a tree is fully known, across centuries, it is thought sentient by some.  Certainly, wiser, kinder and more productive than people you have known.   With a few instances you'll admit to being in their category too, I do.  No worries, gardens seek, and receive forgiveness.  

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Pic, above, here.   Don't have the vista, above?  Easy, site a hedge behind the bench.  The road, your neighbor's fence, whatever, poof pouf, gone.

Nature goes about her business.  You can partake, on her timeline, but not control.  More, another layer of Nature may take out your every effort, though you've thought-like-a-farmer.

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Siting, How to Think like A Farmer to your career/retirement/parenting/grieving/friendships/etc, "1. Prepare the soil.  2. Intentionally plant seeds.  3. Once you've planted the seeds, let them grow.  4. Remove any weeds.  5. Learn from previous harvests."  Full article in Forbes, by Amy Blaschka, here.

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Pic, above, here.  Showed this pot table, last year this time.  Have you brought any plants inside for winter?  Choose a table to 'ruin'.  No guilt.  Thrift stores have plenty.  For centuries pots brought inside to overwinter, for their useful flowers/foliage/cooking/medicinal, too tender to over winter. 

Nature gives you her pace, if you accept.  Nature's pace gives your thoughts space to percolate, or answers.  Nature's pace will zing you plenty of epiphanies.  Nature's pace will change you more than you change your garden.  Nature's pace is sacred.  Your garden, Nature, gives you all of this in joy, and earnestness of life.

  

Pic, above, here. Garden beyond the windows/doors, above, makes the room.  Makes a life.  A friend's home always has a good balance of live and fake plants/stems inside.  This could be one of her rooms, above.  Can't wait to show her. (GOOD fakes.)

Who's really thinking like a farmer?  After decades gardening, you will realize, if you're fortunate, it is your garden that has been farming you.  Your garden thinking about you.  When you have years of Gardening, your conclusion will be the same.

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Pic, above, here.  Garden, above, is a modern Garden Design course.  Better, this garden is maximum pollinator habitat.  Trees + Shrubs + Meadow = Beautiful Garden

No, I don't just think all this stuff up.  The garden does.  For me.  For you.

A favorite epiphany from across all the decades in my garden, You choose the plants to put in your garden, choose the people to put in your life.

Templates in gardens, abound across centuries, cultures.        

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Thinking like a farmer, carts with it, modesty.  Layers unseen in Nature, layers unseen you've been in your garden.  

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Pic, above, here.  Tasha Tudor, perhaps the best combination of modesty and gardening.  You do want her book, Tasha Tudor's Garden, here.

"For my part, I don't think that modesty has much to do with what you do or don't know......Instead, modesty is about what you care about, and how that changes your experience of the world......Modesty is more like a way of breaking out of the blinders that experiencing life in a self-regarding way can impose." Nicholas Bommarito.

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Garden & Be Well,   XO T