Lessons on creativity from my Garden

I really think you can learn everything you need to know about life from gardening.  My garden is my greatest thinking and creating place even though I spend an inordinate amount of time pulling weeds which for the most part I like doing.  I understand weed pulling so much better than house cleaning.  I love gardens and I will go to great lengths to see a new one.   I like simple  vegetable gardens with their neat rows of beautiful produce even though I am not very good at vegetable gardens, I like gardens that incorporate creatures like chickens and goats.  I like fancy gardens where they espalier the fruit trees and surround all the beds with boxwood. I love well manicured Japanese gardens with their emphasis on well disciplined plants.  It fascinates me how Japanese gardeners work carefully to bring out the best in a plant, making small landscapes that are idealistic visions of larger natural landscapes.  I love courtyard gardens that show up in the middle of a structure unexpectedly, whispering  to me of exotic locations and mystery. I love a garden with a maze of bushes or a labyrinth for contemplation.  I like green grottoes that are dark and quiet.  I love cutting gardens with their riotous colors of flowers blooming willy nilly.

It seems a lot of my life has been influenced by gardens.  One of my earliest memories was walking down the long path to my neighbors garden and being towered over by the tall dahlias that graced one of the garden paths.  My neighbor also had a very dark green place where bleeding heart and lily of the valley grew in large patches.  I was fascinated by the heart shaped flowers and the place seemed magical to me.  My father always had a huge vegetable garden wherever we lived.  He kept tidy rows of vegetables, raspberries, strawberries, and rhubarb.  We always had fresh vegetables and fruit in the summer.  I spent one summer digging up potatoes which I sold to the neighborhood and used the activity to become strong enough to learn to bowl.  (I think my father used that as a reward so he wouldn't have to dig the potatoes) My favorite books usually have some sort of garden in them somewhere and of course The Secret Garden was one of my all time favorites.  I have spent my life learning to garden and still have a long way to go.  I desire to be like Tasha Tudor with her hills covered in daffodils that she worked in until she died.  I always want to garden.

A garden that grows it's best must start with good soil.  Soil that nature creates is the best.  Lots of well rotted plant material with a dose of composted manure works best.   I used to have Angora Rabbits.  Rabbit droppings are the best.  The droppings do not have to be composted and roses love it.  I don't use commercial fertilizers, I just bury everything.  When I am weeding, I bury my weeds between plants and let them turn into beautiful soil.  I keep all fallen leaves and if possible I mow over them into the lawn. My lawn has weeds too.  I don't like herbicide lawns that look as if you would mess them up if you stepped on them.  I want a complex ecosystem in my yard and I don't mind seeing the various blooms that come from violets, dandelions, and such. 

I also have tried to add lots of native plant life to my garden.  I want birds to visit and I try to forgive the rabbits that munch on things they are not supposed to during the winter.  I like frogs in my pond, a snake to stop by, even the skunk that passes through is interesting.  I don't encourage the woodchucks to stay around and luckily even though one passed through, none have stayed.  There are two pairs of cardinals that come every year, various hummingbirds, a bluejay family, lots of little sparrows and robins, mourning doves, and a few others that I haven't identified yet.  I want them to find sanctuary here.  Butterflies hang around, too and at night you can float in the pool and watch bats catching bugs overhead. 

A garden can teach so many things that are related to art.  Color combinations, textures, composition, are all part of gardening and green seems to be neutral of spring and summer gardens.  Often yellow green in spring with brighter green in summer.  Then there are the burnt oranges, ochre yellows, and bright reds of fall and the evergreens, icy blues, and soft neutrals of winter.  If you are in the Southwest you can see the brilliant colors of spring, but then the hot and spicy colors of summer. The tropics bring the bright vibrant colors to the forefront.  All of this can inspire your art work, from fashion design to fine art, to home decor.   Some people like the red earth colors of the south and others like the dark deep black brown of a well composted loamy soil.  Use those shades to anchor your work.

I think it is kind of funny when people say they want to decorate with earth tones.  Usually they mean beige.  I just don't see a lot of beige in nature unless it is the warm beiges of sand and soil.  The neutrals of nature are vibrant even in the depths of winter.  I don't know why people are afraid to use color in their lives and homes.  We can become so much more alive with colors surrounding us.  Warm, bright colors like orange and yellow stimulate conversations and make us more active.  Cool colors relax us and soothe us.  Color can do so much for our souls.  Don't get me wrong, I love browns and tans and sand colors and I have nothing against white as long as it is white that sings.  Pure bright white, or softly tinted shades of white can be beautiful, so why do we settle for builder's white and beige in our environments? Usually builders use the cheapest colors possible so they have no life in them. And why does everybody think a ceiling is supposed to be white?  Who made that a rule?  Use the sky for inspiration. Try a dark ceiling, or a pale blue ceiling, or a golden ceiling, or  use a tinted white.   Explore sometime all the possibilities of whites in the paint department.  Think about using different types of whites together.  Add texture to your white, or make it shiny white.  A gloss white will reflect various other colors throughout the day and end up being many colors. My daughter was shocked when I told her to paint her ceiling in her store white, but it was an old tin ceiling and a high gloss white made it pop!  White also can be a great color against a dark brown or blue or even purple.  Think of the bright white stars in the purple dark night sky.

I want to do a moon garden sometime.  What is a moon garden?  It is a garden that only uses plants that are green, silver, or bloom white.  It will show at night because the moonlight will reflect off the white flowers.  I just have a hard time holding myself to only green and white.

Everything about a garden inspires me.  The rich colors of soil, the texture of tree bark, the shape of a branch, the many geometries of flowers, the sounds of insects and birds , the structure and texture of rock and stone, and the quiet dripping of water.  The garden in winter becomes a wonderland of sculpture as snow covers plants and bushes.  Ice on the pond becomes an abstract painting.  I knew a painter once who did an entire series of paintings of ice.  She painted it with realism but because it was ice, the paintings looked like beautiful abstracts until you read the titles and you could then see the subject.

It is spring and I have started working in my garden again.  I have another season to add to my vision.  But a garden teaches the artist that she too is just a subject in a greater work of art, because oftentimes what was planned and what happens are two different things.  Plants escape boundaries, or refuse to grow in the place where one wants it so it has to be moved, or an entirely new plant springs up unexpectedly, or insects eat all the leaves, or a fungus takes over, or your dog decides to dig a new hole, and all these unscheduled events cause a garden to go beyond the control of the gardener.  Above all a garden teaches patience and a belief that new growth can spring from things that look dead.  If I could only do one thing out of all the things I do it would be to garden.

Possibilities...

I don't know why, but always throughout my life I find themes happening.  That theme will pop up in more ways than one until it gets downright weird.  I will see it in books, movies, conversations, with friends, street signs, etc. etc.  Since I happen to believe in one that is bigger than I, I don't take this lightly.  I am slow to learn and slow to respond, but I do try to listen.   So in this past week the word has been "possibilities".  It started in an online chat with a friend.  The word popped up.   Hmm interesting.  Not that I haven't heard the term before, after all it is kind of a buzz word.  But it stood out to me in a new way, kind of like bold print, or a halo , or something. 

The next day my son told me about a documentary he had seen about Herbie Hancock, a great jazz pianist, and told me I must watch it.  Guess what?  The title of the documentary is 'Herbie Hancock, Possibilities."  Now that is interesting, I thought.  ( and I highly recommend this documentary because even though it only deals with musicians it's theme is about creativity.)   Possibilities again.  I was reading another Mrs. Pollifax book and there was a section about possibilities...and tonight, again at the recommendation of my son I watched a TED video featuring Benjamin Zander about Music and Passion  and he ended the video with a statement about Possibilities.   (TED is my new favorite internet site...highly recommend it.)  He said that he knew that his job was to awaken possibilities in other people and to leave them with shining eyes.

I think that is my job also...over everything that I do.  More than anything I love to awaken people to their possibilities.  I find people are often stuck, stuck in believing a certain truth about themselves.  Maybe it deals with what they learned about themselves as children from the people around them, or the path that life has put them on, because no matter what life is stinkin' hard,  or maybe they don't live in the place or house they dream of, or the people in their lives have hurt and disappointed them, or they are just struggling to get by.

I also find that people who should be unstuck are still stuck.  I try to find creative people and environments to inspire me.  But oftentimes I am disappointed.  Even among people who are creative there are few who really dare to push the envelope past what is safe.  They do what has already been tried by someone else, they stay safe.  Maybe they stay safe to themselves but they still stay safe.  I like to be safe, I do.  But there is also this rebel in me who wants to do what people say cannot be done.  I had an instructor at college tell the class that he never gave A's to first papers by first year students, NEVER.   Guess who got one, me.  It was a challenge and I took it.  He just had to say that word, never.  That thing is there inside me and there have been many years when I have stuffed it down and tried to do right in other's eyes.  Ignored the thing inside of me.  But it pops out at random times and sometimes gets me in trouble.   That is Thing one.  (thanks Dr Seuss, I love thing one and thing two.)

Thing two is this.  I like to stir up that rebel in other people.  I like to help people climb out of their box.  To push  their own boundaries.  That can get me in trouble also.  And both these things make me nervous because I like to be safe.  I will state that again.  But those things,  well I live with them.  And sometimes they just come out, so if someone says, walk this way, I will go the other, or it has to be done this way, I will find a new way.  And I realized that those things help me push my creativity to new places.

I really like Jackson Pollack.  Yes, people can do his technique and pour paint and splatter it, (and it is tremendous fun to do it).  But he was looking for something new, something that expressed the craziness that was inside of him.  So he did it first and it was new and different and it was great.  He was a mixed up person and a sad person, but he still gave a gift to the world because he pushed beyond safety.

Life is scary and there are no guarantees but it continually amazes me how many people I hear of who have been dealt the worst cards  seem to live the best life;  better and fuller than those of us who have it better with more options  and I wonder why that is.  Maybe those people have grabbed onto the theme of possibility in their life and haven't let people tell them it will NEVER happen.  If I can grab on to that theme for myself and help other people grab onto for themselves I will be happy.  If I can leave people with shining eyes...
Benjamin Zander on music and passion | Video on TED.com