Potatoes Growing & Cucumbers Planted

Time And Patience Are Powerful Allies

Each spring when the flowers bloom, the garden reminds me that you cannot rush beauty.

We forget this far too often, especially when it comes to businesses such as advertising. Conversations and thoughts and meetings and articles always seem to be about the newest shiny object, or the next offer, or the promotion to end all promotions.

The work suffers as a result. There's no time to let it grow and mature. There's no space to let it root and develop. Ideas are sown and harvested in matter of hours or days.

I'm as guilty of this as anyone. I've written video scripts in just a couple of hours, and developed second and third versions is half the time (or less).

I get it. Clients sign the checks on the front, Service providers sign them on the back. We have to keep clients happy so we can keep the lights on.

So clients have incredible power to dictate timelines.

Clients have needs. Clients have deadlines. Clients want it fast and good and cheap (so much for the days of only being able to pick two of three). And with crowdsourcing, design outsourcing, and a gig economy that rewards the lowest bidder more often than it rewards craftsmanship, the competition for clients' attentions and budgets is increasingly fierce.

We don't take the opportunity to sort the seeds of ideas by hanging them all over the office wall (ignoring for a moment the fact that office walls themselves are vanishing in favor of the creative-killing idea of open-floor-plan collaborative environments).

We don't let the seeds germinate by taking walks. Going to a movie. Having a beer in the afternoon. Anything but staring at the seeds.

We don't sow them, fertilize them and water them well by adjusting each syllable so the poetry and impact are both maximized; kerning the type so it welcomes the eye; adjusting leading and line spacing to remove unsightly widows and random breaks.

We don't prepare for a bountiful harvest by diversifying, preferring specialized monocultures (POP, email, content management, apps, social media) instead of holistic, integrated campaigns.

And that creates lifeless, listless, less-than-memorable creative work that is as commoditized as the majority of products they sell. The moments when I see a piece of creative work and think, "Damn. I wish I'd done that." are fewer and farther between than ever before.

Because we simply don't allow time for the harvest to ripen.

When we do have the opportunity to stop and plant the roses, as well as smell them, we must cherish and celebrate it. For with time and patience, great beauty will emerge.

More Tomatoes

 In addition to the plots in the community garden, have dug some area in the backyard this year. We're using old pallets as the borders.

Five more tomato plants, peppers, and herbs are the beginning.

Going to experiment with not using cages on these tomatoes, and see if they can be simply tied to a wire fence.

Another Attempt At Potatoes

Over the last few years, I've made several unsuccessful attempts at growing potatoes. Did have a few purple potatoes grow when I planted rows one year; however, those few spuds were the exception to the rule.

After taking a year off after the ill-fated efforts with building potato boxes, I stumbled across a method using hay and compost.

Create a wire cage about 3' in diameter.
Pile up some hay about 10" deep.
Top with a few inches of compost.
Place seed potatoes around the edge with eyes facing outward.
Cover with a layer of hay about 10" deep.
Repeat layers as desired.

Created two layers.
Here's hoping all goes well.

From Grow Lights To Greenhouses

With the success of the DIY grow lights, we realized we needed to transplant the majority of the tomatoes so we could put them in a greenhouse. There were, however, two immediate problems.

1. There are almost 100 plants needing more space.
2. We don't have a greenhouse.

Since we didn't want to build a greenhouse in the back yard (yet), we opted to try portable greenhouses - clear plastic bins that could hold 20 to 25 tomato plants in red cups (our preferred container for the growth from seedling to plant before it is placed in the Earth).

We mixed our potting medium. Transplanted the seedlings. Gave them a soak in compost tea - there are holes drilled in the bottom of the cups so osmosis ensures that the soil absorbs the moisture. Then placed them in a portable greenhouse.

Less than five days have elapsed.

The results have been astonishing.

We're going to need a bigger greenhouse.

Leave Room For Whimsy

Early in my career as a Jr. Copywriter working at an ad agency in NYC, I learned quickly not to fill in all the gaps for readers. The idea was to involve them in the writing while leaving room for them to make some of the connections. In other words, when you're building a mouse trap, leave room for the mouse.

As my career advanced and I became a student of business and productivity, as well as advertising, I learned to leave room for chaos. No matter how many to-do lists and how much calendar blocking I might do, someone would invariably hand me an assignment that was unexpected and required my immediate attention. Be it edits to something I had thought complete, or a new business pitch, or an assignment for a client I'd never worked on before, there was always a hot project.

"Leave room for chaos" became a mantra of sorts.

In some ways this was my initial effort to develop a mindfulness to accept what was "hot" and treat it with urgency, without getting in my own way by bemoaning the fact that it would disrupt my schedule completely.

I even passed along this bit of wisdom to others, in an effort to help other Jr. Copywriters understand that it wasn't a personal affront to their efforts. It was simply a fact of the pace of business, and would become a daily occurrence 19 times out of 20.

Being a dad, however, has shown me I was looking at it all wrong. It's the other 1 time in 20 that should have some room made for it. The moment of utter whimsy that makes the other 19 times predictable is the moment to savor and seek.

TheKiddo™ and her mami taught me this with a game they created using a d20 (or twenty sided die for those who have never played Dungeons & Dragons).

They'll roll a d20, and when a 20 appears, the one who rolled it gets to punch me in the shoulder. All while giggling manically. Luckily for me, neither punches terribly hard, and it makes me laugh too.

It's that 1 in 20 chance that creates joy and anticipation. And by enjoying the weird little game as much as they do, it involves everyone in the fun. The other 19 possible numbers are just part of what happens along the way.

There will always be chaos to handle.

Makes the random bits of whimsy that much more fun.

Success With DIY Grow Light

Over the past two weeks, we've seen radical growth from the tomatoes and peppers that were started as seeds. We'll be transplanting them a lot sooner than expected into individual cups. Looks like we'll have far more plants than we'll know what to do with.

If you want some tomatoes this spring, let me know.

"Be Unstoppable: Blazing New Trails" - MONAT Global

"Be Unstoppable: No Holding Back" - MONAT Global

"Black: Intro" - MONAT Global

"Black" - MONAT Global