The Honest Scrap Award

In an interesting little exercise circulating among my Twitter groups, I have been “tagged” by Laura Mathews (@punkrockgardens) for an Honest Scrap Award. I was so overwhelmed by pride at receiving this award that I neglected the piles of work on my table and celebrated with a whole bottle of our home brewed raspberry/ginger kombucha.

After recovering from the incredible ‘buch’ high, I tackled the first requirement of this award – list ten honest things about yourself. Being way on the introverted side, this has taken some serious soul searching as to how to express these points without making a complete ass of myself.

So, in no particular order, here are ten things that you may not know about me:

- I am passionate about gardens  and about spreading gardening knowledge -  I have believed for many years that this knowledge and these skills will grow in importance dramatically as our industrialized societies decay from excess, greed and dwindling resources.

- There is likely nothing more important than passing on these and other basic skills to younger generations. If we can grow our own food and beauty, build our own houses, and generally take care of most of our basic needs, we just may survive dramatic transformations in our culture.

- OK, off the bandwagon now – sorry – - despite being an introvert, I recently came out of my shell to perform some music publicly…even in an online video (many thanks to Shirley Bovshow, @EdenMaker for kicking me in the rear end to  do this). Playing for friends and neighbors, and even at a community event, has been a revelation for both the musician and the audience…especially for the musician.

- I love to visualize, though I have no formal training in design. My landscape design sense came about after I had worked in the trade for years. I often saw the results of bad design and informally theorized solutions on site. I was directed to numerous sources for further study and have been most influenced by James van Sweden, Joe Eck and John Brookes.

- Though living much of my life here in N. Idaho, I’ve had the good fortune to landscape in many diverse situations and environments. In younger years I traveled throughout the west, installing large commercial landscapes for a general contractor…sometimes being away from home and family for weeks at a time. These projects were certainly not the pinnacle of aesthetics, but I did learn a thing or two about methods, efficiency, plants, and how to get along with a bunch of very rowdy landscapers. On one project, the principal architect asked me to design the landscape, and that was my first design commission.

- Is that ten things, yet? I am a terrible cook, though I do OK with oatmeal – oh, and I brew the kombucha. I could blame it on my upbringing (the old school…girls in the kitchen, boys watching football), but I know that’s a copout. If Cindy has her way, I will overcome my cooking phobia eventually and be a better housemate.

-Cindy is my wife, and we’ve been married for an awful long time…35 years+ I think. Can’t say it’s been without trial and tribulation, but it’s all been worth it. Without her love and left-brain common sense, I would be long gone lost in right-brain la-la land.

- We have four beautiful children -  one daughter and three sons. All grew up on 12 acres of land that we “homesteaded” starting about 1979. We built the road, thinned the forest, built our home and developed the garden and orchard. The children were part of all the blood, sweat and tears – and joy – and now have a good understanding of the skills needed to survive. All are doing well as young adults, and are not afraid of dedication and hard work.

- Is that ten things yet? I am a very messy and disorganized office person. My desk and tables are usually piled with documents, drawings, CDs, tech gadgets, etc. I sometimes am late paying bills because they are lost under a pile of nonsense. My hammered dulcimer is also in my office, so long, exuberant musical expression is often the needed release for work frustrations.  For about half the year, an even greater distraction is outdoors, in the gardens. I am really not a very good office worker.

- OK, finally number ten. I feel quite fortunate to have retained a somewhat open mind…while many of my associates have completely disregarded the advances in technology and more recently in social media, I am excited by all of  it. My daughter recently told me that some of her friends are astounded that her Dad is on Twitter! I guess you’re as young as you feel.

So now that I’ve bared my soul and exposed all the dirty laundry, I get to tag seven more folks for the Honest Scrap Award:

Jenny Peterson

Michelle Gervais

Duncan Brine

Teresa O’Connor

Angela Davis

Christina Salwitz

Lynn Felici-Gallant