Day 22, June 9, 2010

Farmer Brown pays a compliment. "Tomatoes are looking good," he observes. I'm looking up at him, and from my vantage point a story below, he looks weary as he explains that he and his crew had put up about 450 bales of hay. He needs to make a call, and I have about fifty Cosmo plants to transplant before the rain comes.

Before I leave, I decide to tell him about the snake that slithered by, "Right here! Right where 'Im standing," I say, gesturing with my arms

and hands. I make a raking motion, for good measure... since, at the time, I'm holding a metal rake... just in case the serpent tries to squeeze me. "George, this guy was six or seven feet long. I looked him up. He's a classic example of a Black Rat Snake." I say this with the studied confidence of a veteran herpetologist.

"We just call them Black Snakes." Farmer Brown laughs, "They're all right, except when they get in your house."

"They do?"

"They can come through the stones in the foundation."

"Hmmm. When he came across the path, I just stopped... like I was at the Mystic Draw Bridge. I let him pass. Sort of felt sorry for that fat brown mouse we saw Sunday."

George nods. "He'll find that mouse. And a lot more."

I agree that my tomatoes are looking good. In fact, with the exception of a bumper crop of juvenile weeds, some garden variety pests eating a few bush beans, and a whitish schmutz on a few cucumber plant leaves, the garden is growing beautifully.

I love looking around the garden. On one level, the place is so unfinished, and so many of the things I am doing are a waste of time. They're a waste of time to the efficient farmer. But for me, they are a chance to get to know my field, to try things out.

Like building garden retaining walls.

Like using mulching hay versus black plastic sheeting.

Like placing stones and pebbles at the base of cucumber hills. My little Eddie Bauer Volcanoes.

I love this moment in my life. I love the fact that I am scared totally shitless, and yet I have no doubt. No fear. It's exhilarating, and people I haven't spoken to in years seem to be connecting, and I feel friendly again. So many who achieve commercial success, at one stage or another, become prisoners of commerce. We ignore signs and warnings that it's time to freshen up, to move on. There is only so much life we can live.

I'm committed to starting something new. The business plan is on an 8.5 x 11 typed sheet, and it keeps changing in my head. I guess it's at a scale where I can keep a tiny list of contacts, do most of the work myself, and worry about the rest as it takes off. This is the time in the life of a business that I most love.

I think this is why a garden is such a great metaphor for this stage in my life, and this start-up. It has so much to do with newness and the beauty of new plants.

Buds to blossoms.

Flowers to fruit.