Avoiding "Perfection at the Start" in Your Organic Veggie Patch
Twyla Tharp’s book The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life has been my favourite reading material this week.
I often see correlations between growing organic food and creativity, and here’s an excerpt that highlights an important concept for both.
She writes about planning, and how little or much we need to do, in order to get our creative work done. One way to stop the whole process, she writes, is to get caught up with Perfectionism at the Start.
“Another trap is the belief that everything has to be perfect before you can take the next step. You won’t move on to that second chapter until the first is written, rewritten, honed, tweaked, examined under a microscope, and buffed to a bright mahogany sheen. You won’t dip your brush in the paint until you’ve assembled all the colors you can possibly imagine using in the course of the project. I know it’s important to be prepared, but at the start of the process this type of perfectionism is more like procrastination. You’ve got to get in there and do.”
I know I’m currently procrastinating in my garden. I have three punnets of snow-pea seedlings that desperately need to go in the ground. Confined to their little plastic containers, they are drying out in the sun each day.
But I’ve been stuck. All my trellises and tee-pees are currently in use. There’s no perfect place for my snow-peas right now. I need to make a new trellis, and I’ve run out of chicken wire. So they’ve sat on the back step, waiting to be planted for two weeks.
What I really need to do is just plant them. And then I will find the materials to build a trellis when they grow. I don’t have to have it perfect and ready for the next three months of growth. Better to keep moving, put them in the ground and then deal with the next step, than keep them until they are too big or until they dry out and die.
Twyla (I love her name!) goes on to share how her approach to getting started has changed:
“I used to bask in the notion that all my obstacles to creative efficiency would vanish if I only had exactly the right resources: my own studio, my own dancers, my own theater, and enough money to pay the dancers all year long and to hire the best collaborators. But I’ve learned that the opposite is true: Limits are a secret blessing, and bounty can be a curse. I’ve been on enough big-budget film sets to appreciate the malignant influence of abundance and bloat.”
Are you waiting until you have all your ducks in a row before you make a garden? Are you telling yourself you’ll grow food when you have stopped work, when you’ve bought your own home, when you move to 1.5 acres, when you have enough money to buy the railway sleepers you dream of using as edging?
The problem with those ideas is you are cheating yourself now.
Start now. Start small. Start with the first step. It doesn’t have to be big, it doesn’t have to be perfect and it doesn’t have to stay that way forever.
But it does mean you’ll get to enjoy the flavour and satisfaction of having fresh herbs in your meals, it does mean you’ll get to say ‘I grew that!’ when you prepare a salad to go with dinner, it does mean you’ll be exercising your green thumb muscles so that when your environment and circumstances change, you’ll be warmed up and in fine shape to expand or transform your dream garden.
Start now. Right where you are. With what you have.
I did. And it’s paid off.
I began by growing herbs and leafy greens in pots on the back steps of rental properties. Then I moved to the country and jumped in before I had enough money to create my dream garden, using leftover bricks and fallen branches as edging. It’s all a process. And a journey. And the best part is actually in the doing, not the waiting.
We don’t get long to live. A friend of mine’s dad passed away last week. As a sweet reminder, I’ve been eating the almond biscotti biscuits he baked before he died. He was Italian and a very fine cook. It reminds me how finite life is with each bite, and how if we don’t embrace life now and fill it with those things that we long to do and people we long to share it with, we just miss the whole point.
So jump in, do it imperfectly, grow some delicious organic food, use what you’ve got, and have fun with it.
I’m going to go and plant my snow-pea seedlings now, however imperfectly.
Take action now
In the comments below, I want to hear from you. Tell me…
1. When have you gardened ‘imperfectly’ and it’s still paid off?
2. What would you love to do/have/feel in your garden and how can you make it happen?
All you Sprouters are so awesome ~ thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this post, please share it with your friends!