{"id":4637,"date":"2011-03-16T03:53:09","date_gmt":"2011-03-16T10:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/?p=4637"},"modified":"2011-03-16T03:53:09","modified_gmt":"2011-03-16T10:53:09","slug":"this-isnt-really-a-post-about-gardening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/16\/this-isnt-really-a-post-about-gardening\/","title":{"rendered":"This isn’t really a post about gardening"},"content":{"rendered":"

That gadget you see below is a Soil Cube Tool. It was (very nicely) made by the good folks at Deeply Rooted Organics<\/a> and (very nicely) sent to me as … well, I think of it as a personal challenge.<\/p>\n

Because this isn’t really a post about gardening.<\/p>\n

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The tool is for forming — guess what? — cubes of soil in which to start seeds. A recipe for the soil mix and complete instructions come with the gadget. Upon receiving it, I went to the local farmers’ market, bought four packets from the Seed Lady (three types of salad greens, one type of carrot) and am now staring at the contraption and those deceptively innocent seed packets in a state somewhere between consternation and flat-out dread.<\/p>\n

Oh, not that there’s anything inherently dreadful about the tool or the seeds. The tool is soundly made with hardwood and care. The seeds are local and organic and all kinds of other wonderful things, I’m sure. I have friends who would be just itching to get started — friends who’ve been fantasizing over their seed catalogs since Christmas and who simply can’t wait to get out in their gardens.<\/p>\n

I think they’re barking mad.<\/p>\n

I’ve mentioned before that I don’t approve of the outdoors. It can be fine for a morning’s dog walk and even finer for gazing at through a window as rain rolls gently down the glass. But Mother Nature didn’t design the outdoors properly. It’s always too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry. It contains altogether too much dirt, too many insects, and too many things that look sweetly alluring and will kill you dead if you’re foolish enough to fall for their charms.<\/p>\n

Add the prospect of gardening and suddenly you’ve added dozens, thousands, perhaps even a googolplex of unpleasant variables. You know what I mean. Your soil’s either too acid or too alkaline. Too sandy or too full of clay. Too iron-rich or too iron-poor. Stick a seed into dirt and all of a sudden you have to know more about nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and other trivia than a Ph.D. chemist. <\/p>\n

Worse, each and every tiny little sprout demands unique conditions. Plant two seedlings of exactly the same variety side-by-side and one will faint if it doesn’t get full sun while the one next to it will fling itself on the floor, hold its breath, and turn blue if you don’t give it enough shade. Neglect them and they die. Fuss over them and they die. Neglect the instructions and they die. Follow the instructions down to the last comma and they die.<\/p>\n

But you know, I’m supposed to be this preparedness person. Which means I ought to be a wizard at growing edibles. And I’m not. I am so totally not. <\/p>\n

I’ve tried. Really. I’ve built raised beds, hauled aged horse poop, mixed up whiz-bang soils, bought seeds and plants of all sorts and all I’ve ever gotten from the exercise (aside from an empty wallet) is a handful of 2-inch carrot stubs, several hills of potatoes with their hearts rotted out, some iffy tomatoes, and several bowls of 1\/2-inch strawberries that I could have gotten a lot easier and cheaper if somebody else had grown them. And if someone else had grown them, half of them wouldn’t have been eaten by slugs, either. (Slugs. Yes, here in the Great NorthWET slugs are another thing to love about the Great Outdoors. We grow ’em six inches long and bright yellow. And boy oh boy, do they love strawberries.)<\/p>\n

But now I have this Soil Cube Tool. And these primo localvore seeds. And I’m about to spend my first spring in a house whose backyard may be a wreck, but is filled with soil that former owners worked on for years. (Seriously, that dirt out there is almost edible, it’s so gorgeous.) So I have No Excuse. I have to Try One More Time.<\/p>\n

But this is not a post about gardening. Really.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

It’s a post about thinking.<\/p>\n

When I bought those appalling little seed packets, the Seed Lady — with the depressingly chipper attitude of all People Who Love Nature — said, “You need to think positive. There was a time I didn’t believe I could grow things, either. But one day I just decided, ‘I can do this,’ and I did.” And now she sells seed and produces honey (presumably not personally) and is wholesome and natural as all get out.<\/p>\n

I suppressed a snarl.<\/p>\n

Much has been said about the power of positive thinking. From Napoleon Hill<\/a> and Norman Vincent Peale<\/a> to The Little Engine that Could, we’ve been told repeatedly that We Must Think Positively.<\/p>\n

Well, for you optimists, yeah. That works. I’m not against positive thinking. You know me. I’m very big on thinking free to be free. I’m always going on about how the most important freedom tool is one’s attitude. So no, I’m not against positive thinking. I just know that we have to find our own kind of thinking, and that for some of us positive thinking doesn’t really do the trick. That’s why one of my books is called The BAD Attitude Guide …<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n

I’m a natural-born pessimist. It’s part of me. I have to work around that. I discovered long ago that if I wake up in the morning filled with sunshine and great hopes — the day is virtually guaranteed to turn to sh*t before noon. OTOH, if I wake up grouchy and approach life with cheerful suspicion, the day is bound to get better. Pessimism works for me. For instance, I dislike flying. So I simply assume that every time I get on an airplane, I’m dead. From there on, anything that happens short of dying is a plus. (Being stuck overnight in the Worst Freaking Airport in the Semi-Civilized World<\/a> in between flights wasn’t exactly joyful. But it was still better than death.)<\/p>\n

About 10 years ago I saw a study — just one and I don’t have the clipping of it any more — that confirmed what my life experience had told me: That positive thinking really does work for optimists, but that pessimists actually do worse<\/i> when they’re encouraged to think positively.<\/p>\n

Another study I linked to last week seems to point in the same direction. The findings indicated (among other things) that, contrary to all we’ve been told, cheerful, happy people don’t necessarily live the longest lives. Turns out that worry warts, pessimists, and the overly serious might just take precautions<\/a> that lead them to live longer — and<\/i> be more successful and satisfied with life in the long run.<\/p>\n

Being happy ain’t all it’s cracked up to be<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Still, to each his own. Both optimism and pessimism can mess you up if you don’t work with properly with what you’ve got. The optimist who says, “Oh, everything will work out, so I don’t have to do anything about it” is making a mistake virtually identical to the pessimist who says, “Oh, everything will go to hell, so there’s no point in doing anything about it.” And both can work for you if you know how to “operate” them under a given circumstance.<\/p>\n

All I know for myself is that if I took a cheery “can-do” attitude toward The Dreaded Gardening Project, eventual failure would only be that much more disappointing.<\/p>\n

So after all that, I have two questions: 1) What’s your “thinking style” and why does it work for you? and 2) How the heck do I bend my mind around the dreadful prospect of planting a garden in such a way that — this time — I’ll actually be able to get carrots that resemble carrots and achieve lettuce and arugula that don’t taste like dirt or get consumed by Fortean<\/a> plagues of insects before I have a chance to harvest them?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That gadget you see below is a Soil Cube Tool. It was (very nicely) made by the good folks at Deeply Rooted Organics and (very nicely) sent to me as … well, I think of it as a personal challenge. Because this isn’t really a post about gardening. The tool is for forming — guess what? — cubes of soil in which to start seeds. A recipe for the soil mix and complete instructions come with the gadget. Upon receiving it, I went to the local farmers’ market, bought four packets from the Seed Lady (three types of salad greens,…<\/p>\n

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