I'm not sure if you caught the pictures of our large and over-crowded garden and the gentle suggestion by a friend of a friend on facebook : "All things in moderation." Who knew that the garden would be a training ground for the next phase of The Louise Log.
lettuce, the BEFORE
lettuce, the AFTER (You can't see this but these plants are four times the size of those in the BEFORE picture.)
Being new to gardening, I don't know how others deal with the good luck of having too many seeds grow into plants. Last year I just went with it. It's true the yellow squash got moldy from a lack of air, the dill and mustard greens went to seed before we could even get to them and the cucumbers ... forget about the cucumbers. They were so numerous that we couldn't cope. Even the local food pantries began closing their doors when they saw us coming, bags bursting.
So when it looked like a similar scenario might be unfolding, I broached the subject with Mr. Green of thinning out the seedlings. As usual, he was quick and decisive: "I’ll never do that. It’d feel like throwing out … babies!" I realized that I was going to have to take responsibility here.
And so I did. I faced off with that part of me that wants to do more than is possible, the part that's both overly thrifty and greedy, that wants to cram too much into a day, too much into a garden, and ultimately wants to delay looking squarely and decisively at what is possible. I surrendered and thinned out the lettuce.
The issue is limits. In the garden, it's the limits of physical space within the garden fence. With The Louise Log it's much more complicated, there are all kinds of limits.
I'm grateful to my friend and colleague Mhairi Morrison (star and creator) of the wonderful show Feathers and Toast for writing this beautiful description of a crisis of limits (falling behind schedule) I know too well.
"The temptation would be to go into next week as a chicken and flap around madly trying to do everything that I have been putting on hold for months but instead I shall focus on the eagle and soar above it and remember that the chips will fall where they will."
You might want to watch an episode of her wonderful madcap show. It's purportedly a cooking show but I'd call it more like I Love Lucy meets new age philosophy. There's even an episode on 'being the eagle'.
Mhairi Morrison in an episode of Feathers and Toast