Welcome to the Jungle

Watertown, SD has some awesome community gardens.  Welcome to the Midwest jungle...

One of my walking routes takes me by a local park where my senses are treated to the happy bark and furry play of dogs in the dog park, the squeal of kids running around a big open field, the concentrated, solemn walk of couples along the paths of a cemetery, and the bright bustle of locals tending to their plots in a community garden.  I absolutely adore walking by this hub of outdoor activity.  During spring and summer I'll spend hours walking in and around the gardens and watching things grow.

Flowers and wildlife are my favorite things to enjoy.

However, this park has caused me to ponder my own ability, or lack of ability, to grow plants.

On and off through the years I have joined the throngs of people at nurseries picking out baby flowers to plant in the spring.  Most years I diligently care for these plants for a solid month.  In a good year I might keep up a good pace of watering into late July, but it's rare for a plant in my care to remain vibrant into late August.  I'm not sure what area of my brain is missing or a bit defective, but something doesn't work quite right because no matter their beauty, no matter the lack of stresses in my life, come mid-July my plants are abandoned and left on their own to survive.  (Note:  They don't survive.)

But the community gardens, full of all varieties of brightly colored, touch-inviting vegetables, along with my penchant for listening to too much news with the world seemingly on the verge of water-starved, overheated, zombie apocalypse, gun toting bandits, must-abandon-the-city-for-an-uzi-protected-plot-of-land, have me trying to decide if I will ever need to be able to provide my own food.

Does my future well being depend on me getting a community plot and learning how to grow food?

Certainly many, many people in rural South Dakota excel at growing all manner of crops.  At each place I have worked there are co-workers who will bring in bags and bags of produce for anyone who might want some fresh veggies.  These folks will surely flourish should modern transportation that brings food to our grocery stores suddenly ceases for a month.

A month... Ha.  Were grocery stores to lose the ability to receive shipments of food and citizens found out - food would be out in two days.  Probably one.

This reminds me of another weakness of mine -  the lack of any real emergency stash of canned goods.

It is not looking for me during the zombie apocalypse.

But I digress.  I've watched those who care for plants in the community garden.  They carefully plan their planting to minimize risk of rabbits and other pests, they pull weeds, and they water.

Then they come back the next day and they pull more weeds.  It is clear a garden is a lot of work. Yet there are things I haven't seen - do they fertilize?  Do they have to spray for pests?  How smart do you have to be about what you plant and where?  Without fertilizer and pest spray how do crops stay healthy and how do they keep rabbits away? These are things I do not know.

Whatever these folks do, everything looks so delicious!

Have I mentioned that I do know that the gardeners pull a lot of weeds.  Possibly some of them also don't read very well.  

Or is this some sort of gardener inside joke?

If I journey into an adventure in gardening, it seems like there could be a significant possibility that I would look really stupid, fully exposing my lack of skills.  Also I fear that I would end up with a barren plot.  I sort of don't want to be this guy:

But it seems like 'community' is a big part of the community gardens, so maybe if I join in some conversations and ask a few questions I would be fine.

And most plots seem to turn out a mighty fine harvest.

See, and grow, on.  In the meantime I will continue to ponder my future in gardening.
Julee

A Long Absence but Still Seeing On

Oh my.  It has been more than a year since I sat down and typed out a post.  Certainly there are the usual reasons - job got busy - two hour daily commute - family things - I'm getting older and really, really need to incorporate a bit of exercise into each day - I could go on and on...

But I also found myself feeling less excited about taking photographs.  I had learned all my camera settings, learned them well enough even to teach a couple of photography classes.  I could take okay pictures, but I had done enough shooting and editing to realize how much work goes into really fantastic images and I found I really didn't enjoy spending lots of time in Photoshop.

I've been continuing to participate on DPChallenge since it does keep my brain in the creative world, although my goal has transitioned from trying to create shiny, winning images more towards figuring out how to capture images that either evoke a bit of emotion or that tell a story.

This was my first real success.

I've learned that moody weather can make for interesting photographs, so I went out driving right after some rain one day.  The electrical towers and the surrounding farm land caught my eye - it my image that included the road, which I just took by happenstance, that was my favorite.  (I had other photos from the other side of the road closer up to the towers, photos I expected to be stronger, but this image really screamed RURAL SOUTH DAKOTA to me, and I found that exciting since I rarely get excited about the fact I do live somewhere so rural.)

Here was another I captured on my way home from work in the fog one day.

There haven't been many other successes yet.  Sometimes I still just go with something fun and a bit off the wall. (I took the image below for a challenge called "Portrait in Minimal".  I do not have a studio, I don't have easy access to kids or models, and the tiny city I live in isn't full of great street photography opportunities.  So I figured what was more minimal than an outline of a face.  True it wasn't a winner, but I still think it's an interesting image.)

So despite my absence here, my quest to 'See On' continues.  Just at a slower pace and with a bit more deliberation to the process.

See on,
Julee