January 25, 2007
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Deep Thoughts Journal Links

Growing Independent Media

This is not at all related to gardening but as this site is about to hit its seventh anniversary early next month (I no longer have a record of the exact day but Feb 2000 was the launch), today’s cover story in local Toronto weekly Eye Magazine really hit a nerve, touching me in all the right and wrong places.

The story, “Fight Club: For Independent Magazine Publishers, Love is a Battlefield” written by Dale Duncan one of the founding editors of the brilliant local indie publication Spacing Magazine, addresses the difficulties and challenges of running an independent magazine and brings attention to public misconceptions both in terms of how profitable such an endevor is and how much work and sacrifice is involved.

“…there is a gap between how much we’re loved and the financial support we receive in return for what we do. When publishing your own magazine takes up almost all your free time, the awards you receive, the readers you inspire and the influence you wield will only keep you going for so long. The issue here is sustainability – if you don’t eventually receive a paycheque for your work, burnout sets in, and when that happens, magazines that fill those gaping holes left by mainstream media run the risk of extinction.”

I’ve been struggling with these issues for nearly the entire seven years I’ve been publishing this site. I have tried over the years to find ways to either make this a profitable, paying endeavor for both myself and contributors or keep it casual, reduce the workload and even minimize my own internal expectations. This has been easier said than done and it’s been quite a ride navigating both roads all in a race to avoid that inevitable burnout monster. The last year alone has been nothing short of insane with an increasing weight looming over the last six months. Part of it simply comes down to the fact that seven years is a long time and I’m getting older. Both the site and myself have reached a critical point that follows that old, rather crass adage, Shit or get off the pot. This project has the potential to be more than I can possibly continue to grow on my own but how to get there without selling out has been trying and filled with big starts and even bigger stops.

I don’t want to turn this into a festival of self-pity since this is also an experience I would choose again despite the pitfalls. But I want to thank Dale for writing this piece for both giving me a sense of connectedness at a time when I feel alone and unsure, and for bringing wide attention to the importance and need to seek out and provide support to indie media in this country. It’s in independent media that I most see my own life and values reflected and where I find challenging information, connectivity, and spirit.

“We need to challenge this idea of [publishing being a] labour of love because we really need independent media,” she argues. “There’s a difference between saying I want to run a magazine that pays its staff and I want to be Ted Rogers. It’s hard to say to people ‘I want to get paid for my work.’ But living costs money.”

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January 12, 2007
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Deep Thoughts Events Gardeners Veggies

Secret Gardens

I’ll be traveling to Hamilton, Ontario this Sunday to do a book signing and give two presentations at the Royal Botanical Gardens. Giving gardening presentations and workshops has become a regular part of my spring schedule yet it is something I rarely seem to talk about here. What’s worse is that I have been noticing a growing disconnect between the things I add to the site and the things I talk about at these events. Looking back I think it’s got to be the fact that I am so exhausted by the end of spring that I just kind of move on and lose the excitment to share. Last spring I wrote, designed (with photos) and gave eight completely lectures within a months time! My New Year’s resolution is to start integrating all of these different aspects into this site.

One of my favourite things about speaking to groups is showing photos of the gardens I find in the craziest places. My attitude is that if these people can pull it off, anyone can! I have taken to starting off many presentations with the following photo since I think it’s about the most successful worst garden I have ever encountered.

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I first found this little tomato patch a few summers back while wandering through the alleys of Toronto. Toronto has an exceptionally great alley system that is an interesting (but sometimes indirect) system for walking or biking from point A to B if you’d rather stay off the beaten path. People are less concerned about the back of their house so there is a lot of hidden gems and bits of history that has been left in place.

But I digress. Every summer a group of artists borrow the garages of a local system of alleys to put on an art show called “Alley Jaunt.” I found this little cobbled-together raised bed sitting behind a garage while out exploring these temporary garage galleries. A year later I came across the same garden while on another Alley Jaunt. This time the gardener responsible was there tending to and harvesting an impressive patch of pole beans — his own version of crop rotation! Unfortunately the elderly gent spoke Portueguese and I do not so communication was impossible. I tried to let him know how impressed and inspired I was by his garden as best I could and then went on my way.

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January 1, 2007
5 Comments
Deep Thoughts Ecology Flowers Journal

My 2006 Gardening Highlights

I don’t think I’ve ever done a “Best of” gardening list* but it seems about time to get started. I have done a “Things Killed” list but this year I’m going to accentuate the positive. Picking favourites is difficult for someone like me who tends to favour several things at once. Be warned that what’s on my list today might not be on my list tomorrow… or might not have been on my list yesterday.

Favourite Plant: Ack! This was a hard one. My personal gardening practice leans heavily towards the useful. I’m not really into growing flowers unless those flowers are useful to me in some way. Most of the plants I grow can be harvested at some point and used for food, medicine, beauty products, or scent. That said, I really fell madly in love with grasses this year and my favourite is the native Switch Grass (Panicum virgatum). It’s a beautiful and tough native that grows well in a variety of soil conditions. People are also starting to use it as an alternative energy source. So you see it does fall into that usefulness category afterall.

Favourite Vegetable: This was also a tough choice but it would be hard not to say ‘Black Pear’ tomato considering the incredible fuss I made over it back in the summer when it was in season in my garden. Oh god, how I miss slices of fresh tomato served on a fried egg sandwich!

Favourite Herb: Basil has long been my favourite herb period. Of course when I say basil I don’t just mean plain ole’ sweet basil but include the myriad of varieties, flavours, and colours that are available. So we can always safely assume that basil is a perennial favourite and my number one, period.

Getting that out of the way it would seem that I really developed an appreciation for calendula this year. I’ve been gardening in an alternate plot at my community garden over the last few years and this plot is fairly over-run with calendula. Calendula grows as a hardy, self-seeding annual in these parts — once you’ve got it, it’s not hard to keep it. While I pulled lots of plants out, I also left quite a crop in and was able to harvest large handfuls throughout the summer and fall. I decorated the apartment with calendula bouquets, ate lots of fresh calendula leaves and petals, and dried loads of flowers for future use in cooking and hand salves. It’s such a simple plant but it’s usefulness and hardiness has slowly gained my devotion to keeping pockets of it in the garden.

Most Improved: RADISHES I grew successful radish crops! This is such a joke considering that I have long known how to grow radish successfully in theory, yet had failed time and time again when it came to the application of that knowledge. This year I kicked ass and it was radishes all around!

Best Lesson Learned: I finally cracked the nut that is avocado seed growing. I plan to cover this topic extensively in a future article however I will say that after lots of experimentation I have hit on a method that works well and isn’t that silly 70′s era method that involves trying to balance an avocado pit on toothpick stilts. What you end up with is a real, busy tree and not a thin, leggy stem with three leaves on top.

Favourite Garden Book: I’ll admit that Michael Pollan’s “Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education” is not a new book. I started reading it in 2005 but it was early 2006 before the ideas in it had stewed around in my brain long enough to have a real effect on my consciousness. The entire book is about “rethinking our relationship with nature” and it was the starting point for evolving my own ideas about how we can rethink our view of The City from this out-dated and extremely limiting “concrete jungle” concept into a place where we (as a part of nature) can co-exist with nature.

* Turns out that with some digging I found this old list of top 10 houseplants.

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December 21, 2006
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Deep Thoughts Places

Serenity Now: Portland’s Japanese Garden

As promised, here are a few images from my Feb 2006 trip to the Japanese Garden in Portland Oregon. I defy you to feel Holiday angst while browsing these images. I may need to print one out wall-sized and hang it directly behind my computer.

I’m sorry I waited so many months to say something about my visit to this wonderful garden because my feeling for the place isn’t up at the surface. However orderly, misty, and calm comes to mind. I enjoy visiting a garden like this in part because the contrast between my own gardening practice and a garden like this is so extreme and direct. I can’t help but be in awe of such constrained tidiness. It is not the kind of constraint that makes the muscles in a certain rear area tense up, but the kind of restraint that freaks you out with its intelligence and sense of purpose. There’s a feeling that places like this carry that make me hyper-aware of my behaviour.

Stay calm. Be quiet. Walk slowly. Don’t break anything. Good thing I am showered and wearing clean underwear.

I wanted to run around and express my excitment as I usually do when I’m surrounded by new plants and landscapes, making me feel like a keyed up kid in church who’s got to stay quiet for a whole fifty-nine more minutes. And despite the twitchiness and the certainty I would stumble on a smooth rock and knock over a 300 year old bonsai, I was surprised that despite our frenzied tourist rush I did become calm, and filled with The Deep Thoughts.

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    I am amazed by this staking technique.

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    Moss and lichens everywhere. It’s adds another level of interest to leafless trees.

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    The Sand and Stone Garden

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    I took this one while resting on a bench inside a pagoda. Sitting here made me wish we had a garden like this in Toronto that I could visit and sit in quietly for hours on end. Alas we had things to see and places to go which is kind of contrary to the contemplativeness of the Japanese Garden.

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    I love the sleek stones against the mossy green ground.

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    More moss. More GREEN.

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    I tried to be quiet but this camera shutter lands with a deep “thud.” I think I may have upset this vistitor’s solitude. Sorry dude.
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December 18, 2006
10 Comments
Deep Thoughts Gardeners Journal

Gardening Mad

Because I haven’t done so in a while, be advised that this post contains cursing.

I received an email from a reader recently who was “disappointed” by the current contest prize pack which is comprised of assorted items from Julie Jackson’s Subversive Cross-stitch line. My initial reaction to the letter was, “To each her own.” I have a sensibility and taste that appreciates Julie’s biting sense of humor while others like this particular reader believe it to be, “the most insulting thing [they] have seen in a long time.”

No big deal.

But then I thought about it. And I started to wonder just what it is that people might find so offensive about Julie’s work and the only thing I could think of is that it’s got to be the cursing. I can’t imagine what else it could be because though Julie’s messages might not be work-place appropriate they aren’t hateful or cruel and they certainly aren’t insulting. They are witty, sarcastic, direct, and sometimes angry — healthy and therapeutic responses to things in the world that really do suck; things like cancer, the crap we sometimes put ourselves through during the holidays, the lies told by politicians, working at a job that is spiritually draining: the list goes on.

I love gardening. And beyond that I see gardening as an active pursuit in a world that encourages passivity. For that reason and others that I won’t get into now, gardening has the potential to affect positive change in ourselves and the world around us. Working in the garden brings me joy, excitement, courage, and solitude. Digging my hands in the soil and nurturing a plant fills me with a sense of wonder about the world, and teaches me to embrace failure and learn patience.

I want to share that experience with other people and I want to encourage more people to take it up for themselves.

But I need to say, and have been trying for some time to find a way to say that this experience is not all about sunshine and roses. Like all humans, I am a person with pain who has suffered and struggled. I have come to realize over time just how much gardening is a therapy and a way for me to nurture myself, find solace, and release anger and frustration. I can’t imagine how many of us would have stuck with this “hobby” for any length of time if it were simply about puttering about and making things look pretty. I came to be a passionate gardener because I NEEDED it. Life includes struggle. Sometimes I am grateful for that struggle but sometimes I’m angry and damned if I’m going to accept a world that doesn’t provide space for people like me to punch the air, laugh like a maniac, and say fuck it once in a while!

And because I am a gardener, and these experiences are a part of life, a part of who I am, who I have been, and who I will become, they are not inappropriate or out of context even here, on a website about gardening.

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