No pictures today because it rained!

 We had another thunderstorm roll through last night just before sundown. Rained more than the previous storm, lots of wind and things tossed around, so not sure if I want to go out to the garden and check it or not. The wind was pretty fierce about 2 am so hoping that the tomato bush survived, the pepper is short enough it may have not been buffeted as much. A palm tree was hit by lightning not far from where I live. I think I saw the lightning strike when I was looking out the window from my desk. Turned into a torch or lit match, entire thing went up. When I went out to my car there was ashes sprinkled all over it.

Still need more than that one squall to keep things going. We are in such a multi decade drought right now that we need rain every other day for several hours a day to start making a dent in our deficit. Watering a garden comes second unfortunately, unless you are depending on the garden for food. I'm not and that's okay. Might go out later as it is still overcast and cool, in the mid 70's so wonderful weather for a nice walk in a park or canyon trail. 

Learning how to do something new requires sometimes a change in perspective and how you view things. Gardening requires that you understand how plants grow, what soil is made of, how fertilzer works.. even just a rudimentary knowledge is needed in order to understand what is going on. Why are my leaves turning yellow? Well a couple of reasons and it depends on what you've been doing. Understanding the signs of what is going on, what the weather has to do with success, all that is not to mean you need to be an expert but at least have the basics to take care of something other than yourself. That can be applied to everything from kids, to dogs, to plants and people. Equipment, everything requires you have a basic knowledge of what is going on. Knowing how to take care of a garden and actually having one to take care of are two different things.

I bring this up because I am exploring turning my landscape and other photos into digital art. Not the kind where you go in photoshop and tweak the settings and filters (but I have done that previously with some cool results) but using a paint program and only using the smudge brushes to push pixels around to make it look painted. Now what does this have to do with previous paragraph? Knowing how to paint and actually painting are two different things.  It is requiring me to look at things like shadow and light, breaking the images into blocks of color rather than trying to get every detail.  So having watched Bob Ross a lot, I have a rudimentary knowledge of 'how' to paint but the thought of picking up paint and brushes makes my mind go blank.

Now with a garden you are starting with a blank canvas. You need to know what will grow where and what it will need. I have never had a garden of my own other than owning a house decades ago which I didn't know what I was doing other than they needed sun, water and fertilizer. Now, it's basically the same knowledge but now it's an actual garden I have to plan. I know tomatoes do really well almost anywhere, zucchini, peppers need a bit more care and other than that it's going to be an experiment. 

And that's okay.

Gardening, art and other pursuits don't have to have perfect results in order to be something to have pride in. It is the product of your time and energy and as such it is all yours. Something that you did and had an impact and increased knowledge and experience. That is all that counts lately, as my dear person of interest and soul mate says, 'it feeds your soul' and that's good.