Patience

One of the things I like best about gardening is that it demands patience. While there are ways to speed along germination, fruiting, and rotting, plants have their own time and it does not sync with your Palm Pre/iPhone/whatever. It's biological and ancient. They will not be hurried or cajoled.

For example, this fig tree cutting. I'm told it will root...in about a year. First it will shed its leaves and seem dead, and we will wait. Then some time in the future-- the post grad-school future where I am starting out my highly successful career as guest lecturer and artist shaman-- the fig tree will put out roots. And I will sing and dance.

If it doesn't root-- if what seems like dead, is dead-- that will be the future just as well.

Thesis

"The world is large and full of noise."
-Jane Hirschfield

I meet with my thesis committee for the first time tomorrow.

Diagram

"It is not the number of units in a system that give it strength, but the number of connections between those units."

Notes from Gene Monaco and Chad Hellwinkel's lecture at the Birdhouse

Yield

I'd read that you can grow potatoes in a "tire tree" made by continuously stacking more tires and dirt over the leaves and stems the potatoes put out.

My friend Jorge pointed out that tires contain cadmium, among other things, and so I tried the layering method in a plastic bucket.

It did make potatoes, but not the multiple generations I'd imagined the tire tree would produce. Next year I'll try it with chicken wire and straw or wooden produce boxes. It seems you need to get more height to get a larger yield.

I enjoy the way root vegetables yield. I imagine all the returning UT students are giving way with a similar muted *POP*.

Fall Is Coming

It's still very warm here.

Snake Handlers

snake handlers, originally uploaded by kt.ries.

The truth is richer and better than fiction. These are sketches from a lecture by Fred Brown and Jeanne McDonald, authors of "The Serpent Handlers", at the East Tennessee Historical Society.

My favorite part was about an elder woman of the church: The first time she handled a snake...it died.

End of Summer

Swimming pools remind me of the hot sticky end of summer. This one did especially.

Scotty

Scotty, originally uploaded by katie.shapiro.

This is one of the photos from Katie Shapiro's flickr stream. I love the discernment in her work. The colors are West Coast; the people are nonchalant and beautiful; and--most rewarding to a casual fan-- Ms. Shapiro posts very selectively.

Expectant {6/6}

Expectant {5/6}

The second to last of six "expectant" drawings. All drawings in Black Walnut ink on Rives BFK.

Expectant {4/6}