When does play become work and when is work the same as play?
(the two youngest kitties, running away from the big guys...)
Ed has always said that a goal in your search for work should be enjoyment. The best jobs are the ones you love doing. You might say -- well, that's a luxury! Maybe. But he'd retort that too many people pick jobs for the wrong reasons. Big money, higher status, and who knows what else. They don't think about whether they will actually like going to work. We watch a news clip about a garbage collector who really loves his work. Ed nods in agreement: the guy's got it right.
But how about nonwork stuff? You could say that my gardening is all play. I do it for pleasure. Indeed, my gardens are mostly invisible to the outside world (except via Ocean!), since most of them encircle the courtyard -- all hidden from the road. Why do any of it, if it isn't fun?
It's a gorgeous day once again. Perhaps the skies aren't quite as consistently blue and we don't pass 70F (21C), nevertheless, it really is a most beautiful day. The kind that makes you sing out loud.
I do.
Ed is surprised.
Breakfast on the porch. Long, lovely.
And then I get to work, finishing up the great big spring gardening opus. (From hereon, it will be mostly maintenance.)
(Dance is eyeing the bottle; we use it for watering the tomatoes, silly cat!)
(the earliest of the iris plants...)
It's all grand, especially since one of the loveliest moments in the year starts right about now: it's when the crab apple opens up, with a quick piggy back from the great lilac (both have been part of the farmette landscape for many decades). The crab apple blooms are just starting. The pink and white and delicate green will make take your breath away. Guaranteed. The lilac will follow soon.
As I make my way to the young orchard (to check on the meadow and to see how the beets and carrots are faring), I pause repeatedly to hack away at noxious weeds. The thistle is at the top of my list. It's everywhere. Indeed, in the veggie patch behind the barn, it has so taken hold in the last several years that it would take a heroic and sustained effort to get it out of there. I don't have such grand ambitions, but I do like to keep it out of our way in the area where we are gardening, so I dig away at the prickly nightmare of a plant.
Is this even fun? What I'm doing is so minor (most of the thistle remains stubbornly in place), so harsh on the hands (even though I'm wearing gloves), and so stupid really, that I have to wonder. And yet I continue. Until a blister form on my hand and I call it quits. For now.
(Cheepers, tracking down delectable edibles...)
Perhaps every hobby, every love has its thorny sides. It can't all be fun, right?
By afternoon, I sit down to a pb & j sandwich on the porch, look out at the beautiful crab tree before me and think -- eh, it's all fun. Even the unpleasant thistle digging. The work here has merged with pleasure so completely that they are indistinguishable.
Sometime around noon, I do take a break. Primrose calls! She wants to read a book to me and she knows that she has a ready audience here, at the farmette. There's not anything that I wont drop when the little one FaceTimes me.
And yes, she and her mom do read a little, but mostly she plays and I play too. She has a bunny, I have dancing flamingos -- it's all quite wonderful.
Later, much later, Ed and I go out for a quick drive. The poor guy worked all afternoon at removing a rusted front brake disc from my car (I'm not sure that counted as fun) and it was time to test the replacement. Too, we had to pick up a box of produce from our Community Supported Agriculture delivery site. (It's still wintered veggies and spring wild garlic ramps, and green garlic, but I see a bunch of sorrel as well. Maybe a green soup should be on the menu this week?)
The brakes are working, the car is moving, the CSA box contents are in our porch cooler, ready for some imaginative cooking. But not tonight. We opt for the easiest of the easy: scrambled eggs and a mix of our own asparagus, sauteed with some of the ramps and spinach leaves.
Evening. Quiet time. Not play, not work. Quiet time has us shed those constructs. It's now all about unwinding from the day that's behind us, so that we can be fresh for the day ahead.
(the two youngest kitties, running away from the big guys...)
Ed has always said that a goal in your search for work should be enjoyment. The best jobs are the ones you love doing. You might say -- well, that's a luxury! Maybe. But he'd retort that too many people pick jobs for the wrong reasons. Big money, higher status, and who knows what else. They don't think about whether they will actually like going to work. We watch a news clip about a garbage collector who really loves his work. Ed nods in agreement: the guy's got it right.
But how about nonwork stuff? You could say that my gardening is all play. I do it for pleasure. Indeed, my gardens are mostly invisible to the outside world (except via Ocean!), since most of them encircle the courtyard -- all hidden from the road. Why do any of it, if it isn't fun?
It's a gorgeous day once again. Perhaps the skies aren't quite as consistently blue and we don't pass 70F (21C), nevertheless, it really is a most beautiful day. The kind that makes you sing out loud.
I do.
Ed is surprised.
Breakfast on the porch. Long, lovely.
And then I get to work, finishing up the great big spring gardening opus. (From hereon, it will be mostly maintenance.)
(Dance is eyeing the bottle; we use it for watering the tomatoes, silly cat!)
(the earliest of the iris plants...)
It's all grand, especially since one of the loveliest moments in the year starts right about now: it's when the crab apple opens up, with a quick piggy back from the great lilac (both have been part of the farmette landscape for many decades). The crab apple blooms are just starting. The pink and white and delicate green will make take your breath away. Guaranteed. The lilac will follow soon.
As I make my way to the young orchard (to check on the meadow and to see how the beets and carrots are faring), I pause repeatedly to hack away at noxious weeds. The thistle is at the top of my list. It's everywhere. Indeed, in the veggie patch behind the barn, it has so taken hold in the last several years that it would take a heroic and sustained effort to get it out of there. I don't have such grand ambitions, but I do like to keep it out of our way in the area where we are gardening, so I dig away at the prickly nightmare of a plant.
Is this even fun? What I'm doing is so minor (most of the thistle remains stubbornly in place), so harsh on the hands (even though I'm wearing gloves), and so stupid really, that I have to wonder. And yet I continue. Until a blister form on my hand and I call it quits. For now.
(Cheepers, tracking down delectable edibles...)
Perhaps every hobby, every love has its thorny sides. It can't all be fun, right?
By afternoon, I sit down to a pb & j sandwich on the porch, look out at the beautiful crab tree before me and think -- eh, it's all fun. Even the unpleasant thistle digging. The work here has merged with pleasure so completely that they are indistinguishable.
Sometime around noon, I do take a break. Primrose calls! She wants to read a book to me and she knows that she has a ready audience here, at the farmette. There's not anything that I wont drop when the little one FaceTimes me.
And yes, she and her mom do read a little, but mostly she plays and I play too. She has a bunny, I have dancing flamingos -- it's all quite wonderful.
Later, much later, Ed and I go out for a quick drive. The poor guy worked all afternoon at removing a rusted front brake disc from my car (I'm not sure that counted as fun) and it was time to test the replacement. Too, we had to pick up a box of produce from our Community Supported Agriculture delivery site. (It's still wintered veggies and spring wild garlic ramps, and green garlic, but I see a bunch of sorrel as well. Maybe a green soup should be on the menu this week?)
The brakes are working, the car is moving, the CSA box contents are in our porch cooler, ready for some imaginative cooking. But not tonight. We opt for the easiest of the easy: scrambled eggs and a mix of our own asparagus, sauteed with some of the ramps and spinach leaves.
Evening. Quiet time. Not play, not work. Quiet time has us shed those constructs. It's now all about unwinding from the day that's behind us, so that we can be fresh for the day ahead.
