The Call of the Wild

by Richard Reeve on May 18, 2009

in @CCSeed

Horse-drawn, two-furrow plough.
Image via Wikipedia

We are heading into that eight week stretch here at the Cottage where attention needs to shift outdoors. Though we had a frost this morning, that possibility is dwindling each day.  Gardens need planting, plants need tending and…I guess you know how the story goes.  It’s this window each year, the sowing, that makes the harvest a possibility.

It’s a metaphor that has wide implications in our life and work: knowing when to strike…getting while the getting is good, etc.  Nature has rhythms that provide windows of opportunity.

Bears know when to sleep in the blueberry patch and when to hang out by fish laden streams.  Over the last four years our sense of timing has shifted more to the signs in the environment than any reliance on a date on the calendar.

I wonder how this approach might help take the stiffness out of planning I often see crippling organizations?

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  • When planning my garden each year, I look for managable plants, vegetables/fruits that we eat often, and I consider what their watering/sunshine requirements are. My planning starts way in advance of me ever tilling the raised beds. I know each year that I will be planting around a certain time frame, but I allow the weather outside to tell me when to plant. For me, the scent and feel of the air is different when it is time to plant--hard to explain. I stick to my intuition to tell me when the time is right to plant, and so far each year I havnt been off.
  • It's interesting...our first year here the neighbors watched as we made blunder after blunder...planting to early, putting shrubs where the deer would mow them down, etc. But as the year's have gone by and our trust has grown they are now abt to speak a little word here and there when we are acting like greenhorns. In the end it's experiential knowledge that gives the touch and the awareness of how the cycles unfold.
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