Spring Digging.

Spring is finally here!  Every Saturday in spring should be like today--a little cloudy, warm enough to have all the windows open and let the cat smell the outdoor breeze coming through the house, nothing particular on the agenda to take me away from a lazy breakfast and enjoying being in my home.  

Spring break was less than spring-like, and also less than break-like for me--I spent spring break working at my law firm job in Topeka and trying to get ahead on the semester's writing and research projects.  But I had spring on my mind and a little bit of free time on my hands, so I decided to build myself a garden.  

Until the dirt started flying, this was really only a partially formed idea.  Our back patio is built over what used to be a brick driveway.  The area between the patio and the street is the sunniest part of the property we live on, but was only about an inch of soil and grass on top of bricks.  

 Cj and I had talked about how cool it would be to have raised beds in that area, but had so far been deterred by the bricks, hours of manual labor, and expenses standing in our way.  But we came up with a relatively low-cost idea for building our raised beds, and I decided it was time to find out just how much brick-moving and manual labor was involved.

I started by gathering and stacking all the rocks and bricks that were mixed in with the soil on the surface.  Then I found the edges of the brick paving and decided the layout of potential raised beds.

Then I started digging up the bricks,
followed by more carrying and stacking:  

Meanwhile, I was gradually scooping up the thin layer of soil to expose those super cool Lawrence Kansas paving bricks around the outside of the garden area...

 Cj and I paid a visit to the City of Lawrence composting facility this morning on "Load-your-own Day" of the annual compost sale and got some morning exercise and a truckbed full of steaming compost.  Here's Cj mid-scoop at the compost mound, before a friendly hippie loaned us a second shovel so that we could scoop simultaneously:

We visited Cottin's Hardware to find some two-foot long rebar segments and chicken wire for the raised bed structure:

 

And then started filling in our new raised bed with compost and dirt from the excavation. It doesn't look like much yet but just picture it with plants all over... to be continued.

Meanwhile, I can't wait to get out and use our 

outdoor living room all spring, summer, and fall!

(This photo is from Rachel's birthday party on our back patio last July.  I want more of this, and soon...)

The Thing about Failure...

This post is about positive thoughts on rejection and failure.   

But first a little background:
That giant of a research project on the Ogallala Aquifer, which has consumed much of my homework time over the past seven months, reached its final deadline a couple of weeks ago.  I turned in a project that I was quite proud of, that I felt said some very important things, and that taught me a ton.  And if time and energy measured the quality of an end product, this one would be dynamite.

This paper, and those written by my fellow staff members on the law review, was eligible for publication in the Kansas Law Review.  But my paper didn't make the publication cut.   I was disappointed.  Sometime in the last year, my measure for success for paper writing became publication--not meeting deadlines, turning in a quality project, or making the grade, but publication in an academic journal.  

It was good practice in dusting myself off and getting over myself.  It's good to have a nice balance of success and failure in your life, I think.  Keeps you realistic, keeps your feet on the ground.

Since finding out, I have had the opportunity to turn a critical eye back at my paper, with the help of constructive criticism from some encouraging professors and generous fellow law students.  It turns out it's ok, but flawed; it turns out a lot more work could be done to make it live up to a standard of what I would be proud to see in a publication.  

The question is: Will I put that work into it now, and try to resubmit it elsewhere?  If I decide to do that, there's a good chance I could sink a lot more time into it without seeing much benefit--not many publications are willing to look at a student's work. 

This quote that I read on another blog helped me to accept this whole situation as just the way it should be, and to accept that my time spent was not (and will not be) futile.  This is attributed to Ira Glass, and quoted from Adulting (one of my favorite blogs these days):

"...The thing I would just like say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste and they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short, you know, and some of us can admit that to ourselves and some of us are a little less able to admit that to ourselves.
...But we knew that it didn’t have the special thing that we wanted it to have… Everybody goes through that. And for you to go through it, if you’re going through it right now, if you’re just getting out of that phase or if you’re just starting off and you’re entering into that phase, you’ve got to know it’s totally normal and the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work.
Do a huge volume of work. ... Because it’s only be actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions."

Well... I'm taking that advice.  I realize that legal and academic writing takes practice.  This semester is an exciting challenge for me because I almost all of my homework is research and writing: I will turn in three more papers that constitute the same volume of work as this one before the end of the semester (including several drafts between now and then). 

And meanwhile this afternoon, I'm taking a break from abstract thought and computer screens (other than writing this blog post)... I'm gardening: another thing that I believe takes a lot of practice and persistence to get good at. 

Last year, in my first year gardening on my own, I had some successes (unfortunately, my best crops were eggplant and swiss chard, neither of which I am inordinately fond of) and some serious failures (like the tomatoes that sat on the plant, green, for two months, never ripening... weird).  I learned a lot. 

This year, I am going to make a better use of my space and sunlight as possible, and I'm not going to make the mistake of having too few plants on hand, or letting the drought outsmart me.  This year is practice round two, and I will have a few failures again, but of course that's part of the process of becoming, and creating, and doing it right.