Finding My Medium

It’s planting season and I’ve had significantly less time to write.  Two weeks ago it was Mother’s day, and for those of us in Denver that means we can put roots in the ground.  My evenings and weekends have been filled with soil.  There was a lot of work to be done in the garden before I could think about planting.  The first step was to clean out the existing vegetable beds.  One raised bed had been haphazardly planted in mid-March with lettuce, arugula, cabbage, radish, and swiss chard.  Already in that bed were chives, parsnips, strawberries, and at the other end some raspberries as well.  I still haven’t decided what I’ll plant in it for the summer season. The raspberries are a challenging companion for many plants, and are slowly expanding their range in the bed.  The other raised bed hasn’t been touched since last fall, and was filled with dandelions and happy little seedlings from the neighbors Siberian Elm tree*.  This raised bed is ...

Describing my garden as my medium isn’t entirely accurate. My medium is something beyond “the garden.” It’s our land. It is much more than the plants growing here. I want this space to be full of life. There should be flowers, worms, bees, fruits, grasses, trees, spiders, and chickens. There should be harmony. The garden is a macro view; it’s the obvious and visual piece. I want this land to teach me lessons that I can apply to more land in the future. I want my canvas to grow. In my wildest dreams of success it might inspire someone else too, the way that learning about regenerative agriculture has inspired me. The words “Finding My Medium” were scrawled on the top of a page for the last 4 seasons, and I did nothing with them. They just sat there. Every once in a while I would erase them and write them again. I found myself inspired to expand on the idea sometimes when I was wandering through the botanic gardens admiring a stranger’s use of color, texture, and repetition. I hav...

The first time I wrote the title “Finding My Medium” it was more than a year ago. I remember the moment specifically. I was planning my garden thinking about colors and textures, and whether I would have points of interest in each part of the garden during all four seasons. I was thinking about which plants would add structure to the design and prevent the garden from looking too wild. How would I incorporate beauty into utility? In the weeks before that moment the idea of creativity had been on my mind. I hadn’t been feeling creative. I used to draw. I used to paint. Where was that part of me? I’d sat down with an old sketchbook several times and had found it entirely unsatisfying. I wasn’t good, but there was a time when the process was enough to fulfill me. It wasn’t that long ago. As I sat and planned my garden, I had a fortunate moment of familiarity. I recognized that feeling I had been longing for. It was how I used to feel sketching, painting, and c...