The Garden Report – Getting Ready

A few clear, sunny days earlier this week were an unexpected respite from the typical  Pacific Northwest shades of depressive winter weather. That meant boots on and out the door for a whirlwind garden and yard prep. Looking at my garden in progress (the construction site that it is!) I could see just how much progress I’ve made. While it is in no way gorgeous, the improvements are remarkable. And I did them all by myself, which is more thrilling than demoralizing like it was at the time. So, buzzing around the garden, I took a bit of pride that uncovering from winter was miles easier than last year.

My big goal during the few days of sun was to clean out a remaining section of unknown shrubs – possibly a type of wild blackberry? – and prep an L-shaped area for planting a few bushes. The area is actually pretty big: one leg is 6’x3′, the other 10’x3′. In the scale of my lot, this is tiny, but this is the size of some people’s entire garden area! For me, its a tiny area in a side section of the yard, which will serve as a connector between my white garden and the burst of color in the back. The fact that I can even write that sentence is incredible. Because just a short time ago this area (and the flower bed in front) was completely overgrown with – yup, blackberries. What this spring will be a burst of white, yellow and pinks, was about 10-12′ feet high mound of blackberry briars that I hacked, whacked and tamed. You can’t imagine how exciting it is to finally see the ground and be ready to PLANT gorgeous, wanted, desired plants!

My big treat – the one big splurge – is a Pom Pom bush. I have fallen in love with the white snow ball bouquets of spring and the joyous red & purple riot it brings in fall.  At our local nursery, a quite large tree is about $30 – which is a much better buy than the 5 gallon starts you could buy online for $40+. The mature bush can grow to be 12’x12′ – prefect as a privacy screen, which is much needed with my new neighbors and the lack of fence between us.

As I prepped and plotted just the right location for my big fluffy friend, I was struck with  realization from last year’s gardening season. I need to find ways to make planting easier. My lessons from last year have lead to a pretty big personal resolution. My challenge for 2018: Dig the holes before buying the plants.

You might be the uber-gardener who already has this down pat. But me? Not so much. Last year I planted 222 plants (not including seeds) and did so mostly on the fly. Building a garden from scratch was an exercise in ‘flowers as muse’, or fearless gardening as I called it. Outside of my original design, I found myself falling in love with plants or finding a ridiculous sale and then needing to find the perfect place for my new bounty. Additionally, most of those 200 plants were a windfall gift, so I had to say yes to the plants and then find a place for them to live! Flowers as muse was a blast! I loved it, tbh. But the race to make sure the plants didn’t die in the pot was a bit overwhelming. A few times I did an all-day planting in order to go on vacation! Now that I’m no longer in complete start-up mode and have a good understanding of the sales cycles at my major garden centers, I doubt I’ll ever have that many plants to place.

But, as ambitious as my dreams get, who knows? Regardless, I’m making a deal with myself:  I have all the prep work done, then the plant can come home with me.

So, in the next week this is on the agenda, rain or shine: In addition to the Pom Pom tree, I’m transplanting 7 lilac trees (out of 22 small volunteers that need new homes), two quince, two forsythia and a hydrangea. And the holes are dug, waiting for me. Wonderful! I love that for once, I’m ahead of the game in my garden.

What’s your #fearlessgardening plans for the week? If you are making a #GardenFromScratch I’d love to hear from you!

High School Confidential

When you look back at your career, what information or advice do you wish had been acquired in high school rather than as an adult? 

I’m working on a project that will connect kids with contacts in their “dream” professions. For kids outside major metropolitan centers, many careers (not just the arts) aren’t even a consideration because they have never met someone who works in the field. (True story.) From experience and recent conversations, it is clear that counselors don’t always know how to direct students to contacts in their desire field and push them towards “safe” subjects. I’m working on a way to connect high schoolers with mentors in professions they may not even know exist. The first step is hearing from YOU about what would have made your career path easier, starting in high school. Can’t wait to read your comments!

Ed-itorial

I spend a great deal of time thinking about the educational system and how our entire American life can be traced back to our collective K-12 experience. Technology and change are sweeping across the desks of our classrooms, leaving most of us unaware of the realities facing today’s teachers and students. Education is a sequestered world of its own with little to no transparency to outsiders. I don’t understand how so much time, energy and resources are spent in defense of learning, yet we are falling behind so quickly.

Seriously, why aren’t all classrooms like Freedom Writers?

I’ve had the opportunity to see the process from the inside, as a community manager for an elite business school; overseeing an educational council offering financial literacy tools (heard of The Stock Market Game?); and as a student in two graduate programs, including the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. At J-School, my first long-form radio documentary explored the initial education and subsequent re-training of Washington State timber workers in the aftermath of the industry collapse.

My experience is a little unorthodox, yet deeply influences the questions I want to explore about the current state of education. Growing up in a rural school district and then spending five years as an adult immersed in the Ivy League, provided a core understanding about access, information and ideas. Spending the days meeting Nobel Laureates and working with Wall Street execs, then shuttling two subway stops to Sugar Hill (a neighborhood that a kindergarten entrance counselor told my friend with hesitant delicacy, “Well — there are schools in the district”), I began trying to mentally rectify the inconsistency.  Reviewing applicants for one of the most competitive program in the country, the spectrum of educational opportunities lifted off the page. Tales of educational privilege started piling up in my pitch file.

Completing graduate work in disruptive technology offered me time to research trends in online courses and the social implications of e-course based homeschooling on the future of funding, levies and school segregation. For the past several years, I have been immersed in the public discussion while curating & creating content to support foster children (a group with less than 2% college attendance rates).

As I talk to educators, I hear a narrative that needs to be told, for our kids, teachers and mainly, our economy now and in the future. Recently, I was pitching an extra-curricular mentoring project to a teacher working in a rural school district – the same one Merce Cunningham attended. She offered a disturbing view of an economically depressed region with seven high-school suicides in the last year. “From my perspective, many students begin their junior year with me already feeling defeated and resigned to a life that they don’t necessarily want, but don’t know how to change,” she wrote. They are unable to finish career-related projects because the “the job shadow and subsequent paper they must write in order to graduate overwhelms most of them, simply because they won’t consider their passions in life as possible career opportunities.”

I am currently exploring the realities of teachers and students across America and tapping in to the national dialogue about how and why we learn. Today, I am asking YOU what we, as alumni and responsible adults, can offer to our communities of origin and choice. What is happening in YOUR community to help connect teens with jobs, college and mentoring beyond their home borders? Please share your experience and ideas, I’m eager to learn from other states and schools.

The illusion of ‘free’….

“Just because products are free doesn’t mean that someone, somewhere, isn’t making huge gobs of money,” writes Chris Anderson.  But who? How? And for what?

The free distribution model is most concerning because there is an imbalance between product, distribution and customer. The concept of ‘free’ only works if all parties are aware of the exchange.  In this program, the information grab behind ‘free’ has become clearer.  My gmail account, while lovely and of no monetary cost, is actually offering personal, private data that will inform marketing decisions for years to come.  My day-to-day life is being monitored, measured and monetized so quietly, I forget its happening.  Purchasing razors, video games or even a free lunch with a beer, is an open exchange where the transaction cost is obvious to all parties.  Using my Google Analytics results for my web-based business, isn’t as out transparent.  I would be interested to know how many users can identify and articulate the nuances of labor exchange and gift economies.

As an entrepreneur, I find it interesting that n0one would expect my crafts and design to be distributed freely, but I am expected to give away my work as a resource for good travel information because it is online.  My ‘competitors’ in the crafting community are using traditional and seemingly ‘free’ marketing tactics to drive business to their site: free advice (now, through podcasts, blogs and etsy.com tutorials), free craft fairs, and etsy.com (which some say is a disruptive model as well).  But the craft fairs charge an entrance fee and etsy.com charges a percentage of every transaction.  Free isn’t free.  Where will the start-up costs come from?  If a band is distributing their music for free, but making money on the tours, where is the tour money coming from?   In a world without venture capitalists, financing endeavors become much more difficult if you aren’t making money on every exchange.

Rick Steves is a good example of making a lucrative business based in ‘free.’  The company is estimated to earn $40 million a year, much of his offerings are of no cost: podcasts, TV shows, radio programs and now even an iPhone app.  But unlike Google, the exchange of services are extremely transparent: I’ll give you a TV show, but its really a teaser for a trip.

In a June 2009 interview with Writer’s Digest, he said: “I’m lucky I’ve got a quirky business design where we do make plenty of money from royalties and from taking people on tours and retailing stuff.  But information is our publicity stunt. I feel sorry for somebody who has to compete with me who doesn’t have the financial opportunity to make money accidentally through his writing.”

The author of the article notes:

Free—as a rule of thumb—seems to be a key tactic over the course of his career, whether handing out radio programs, newspaper columns or lectures to bolster his overall reach. For new writers looking to break in, Steves says it can be a great plan, and it worked for him; problem is, it’s a rare feat to make money at travel writing unless you’re a paid staffer somewhere. But when confronted with giving his message away for free or not at all, Steves finds it to be an obvious choice.

Steves subsidized the creation of his company by giving piano lessons and travel classes until he had enough capital to found Europe Through the Back Door.  His real product are large group tours which range from $1700 – 5,000. A trip for 28 people at $4,695 a person grosses $7,732 per day.

Unless all online organizations can find the third product, ‘free’ is doomed to haunt the economy.  (And please note, even Anderson can’t come up ‘freebie’ for his Gillette example: “Shaving cream?” he ponders.)  If the original product, say, newspapers, is no longer of perceived value, then they must branch out:  maybe sell tickets to dinners, readings and tours with their reporters and interviewees.  They could also move toward a non-profit model and sell the idea of community, as public radio and theaters already advocate. If you like it, pay.  While I don’t want to subscribe to a paper version of the New York Times, I’d be glad to pay $25 or so a year to ensure I can use their services.  But should they have to undercut their value?

Free is a false front, one that requires organizations to make money in a back-channel manner.  Just as the tech bubble burst by thinking that sites could sustain while not making a profit,  free is not a sustainable model for all information-based industries.  Anderson’s assertion, “information wants to be free, in the same way that life wants to spread and water wants to run downhill,” is a made up statement designed in a “technological utopian.”  Well, until milk and bread want to be free, there is a disconnect between reality and tech fantasy.