Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Gardening for a living

While I am home recovering this week from eye surgery, thought I’d catch up with things. I’ve been doing a lot of garden maintenance, my newest plan B career. A, being my art career, which I have been ignoring in favor of B. This is the first time in my life I’ve done work and simply gotten paid for it at an agreed upon price. I have always worked on speculation, whether for tips or making things to sell. Just getting paid is sooo easy. Who would have known? And I love going to work; I’ve never enjoyed leaving the house as much. Going to work to make art is in a different category since I am not “going out into the world” physically, so the two experiences are not comparable in my mind.

Anyways, I am taking care of 10 gardens, 2 are actually getting very little care, but I check in from time to time for the essentials, they are both old and don’t require much attention. In a state of grace you might say. The garden I spend the most time in is always running way ahead, I will be lucky to cover all the areas before Thanksgiving and it already needs me to go back and redo what’s been done, everything lively and boisterous and jumping around. But this garden will be splendid one day. One garden just stays finely tuned all the time. Wonderful Jerry helps me out from time to time in various gardens and I am counting among these our garden, which we both work in for free, of course, sorting out the coexsistanance of our different styles and tastes. Several others are volunteer efforts, the Police Station’s perennial garden, with tomatoes plants added, right around the corner from us. The Pocket Park which I am determined to make into a lovely little public place in time and my Guerrilla Garden where we have saved several very old, very big Yews, one from grape vine suffocation and on from weed tree invasion. But the next job there is hard and nasty, separating gavel from dirt to resurrect perennial beds. Maybe in the fall, when it’s cooler?

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