The rock I've been under is dirt.
The rock I've been under is dirt.
I thought you were a photographer, what are you doing out there?
My hiatus from client work wasn’t so much intentional as it just sorta happened. The timing was right, I suppose.
I’d just wrapped up a months-long project with my biggest client, and it seemed like the perfect time to finish up my half-filled garden bed. I have a new neighbor that runs a local landscaping company and he offered to to get me some dirt & compost for the garden beds. I didn’t know how much to ask for. I gave him the bed dimensions and said I wanted to build a second bed. He recommended 3 cubic yards.
It was a lot of dirt.
It was so much that I decided to make a third bed at the edge of what will eventually be fenced in.
Even after filling the third bed, I still had more soil to use up. So I looked around at other potential planting areas. I wasn’t going to build another raised bed, I already spent enough time and money on these three.
A youtuber told me to it’s good to plant herbs around the base of trees because many herbs to well in partial shade. Sounds good, let’s do that.
It looked a little unfinished, so I chopped up some dead trees from the other side of the grounds and made this little border. I wasn’t sure about it at first, but later my mom said she loved it and that it looks beautifully organic. Nice.
My neighbors will stop by and ask what I’m growing. It happens frequently enough I’m considering placing the planting diagram outside. They don’t seem to be interested once I start mentioning what’s in there. Maybe they’re just looking for some plant they care about and it’s not on my list.
One guy said his Irish immigrant father grew copious amounts of potatoes.
I haven’t planted any potatoes.
We’d wanted this garden since the day we got the house, and thought we would have it set up and planted immediately, but - surprise, buying a house that’s been mostly neglected for 30+ years and totally vacant for few years after that, then fixed up on the cheap by a first-time home flipper, there was a lot that required immediate attention and pushed optional plans, like spending time in the garden, to the backest-back-burner.
We also had a gorgeous little baby girl in October, so there’s that, too.
There’s so much more to be done out here, and adding a fence to keep out deer is a crucial step to protect all the work that’s gone into it so far.
Doing all this, building the garden, clearing fallen trees and dead branches, cleaning and sculpting the yard, has reminded me how much I love working the earth. It helps me feel much more connected to home, our planet that we’re a part of. I won’t get too philosophical here, but it’s been a good reminder of just how much I love being outside, and how much I don’t really love being sat in front of a computer all day, or getting consumed with the god awful little slab of glass and metal in my pocket (it’s not the phone’s fault. It’s just a tool. An amazing, wonderful tool. Sorry iPhone, you’re great. Social media apps aren’t.)
Writing this, however, is really nice, and it’s a way that I’m much happier to present my images than using my phone.
So, I very much look forward to catching up with you here, or at the very least sharing what I’m up to.