The Artist's Life: August Garden and YouTube Videos as a Creative Medium

A Japanese cucumber takes to the fence

This year, the tomatoes are surprisingly spare in their production. I was looking forward especially to the Cherokee Purples, which are so delicious. Six or so tomatoes on my one Cherokee Purple plant--ah well.

Even the cherry tomatoes are a bit stingy, well that is except for the chaotic mass of cherry tomato plants that seeded themselves from last year. They are forming a little tomato jungle in a section of the garden, outside of tomato cages and supports.

I do have some nice squash plants adventuring up fences and along the ground--kabocha, zucchini and delicata from the look of them. 

It's time to get the autumn garden going and yesterday I planted some swiss chard, kale and arugula seeds in a big raised bed.

It's August already. The summer is flying on much too quickly. But so it is.  Fortunately, we still have a bit more of it to enjoy.

Speaking of enjoyment,  I find that I rather enjoy making YouTube video clips.

I know that public speaking is at the top of the list of fears for many people. I used to be in that camp, but not these days. I don't recall exactly when things changed in that regard. But they did. I love public speaking and performing in general. To me, it's a form of creative play and expression that is invigorating and delightful.

Hostas are blooming and it's time to clean up the beds, too

The sunflower next to the compost area  is tall and happy

The process of creating YouTube clips gives me an opportunity to practice performing, and gives me feedback on body language, gestures and what works or needs change or improvement.

In its own way, it's like growing a garden.

With the help of my friend Anne, I recently created three YouTube video clips.

One video clip introduces my new book Songs of the Inner Life and talks about the healing power of memoir and life review. Two of the clips focus on A New Wrinkle, our musical revue on aging.

In those clips, I share snippets from several of the songs, including The Silver Tsunami, Sex after 60 and Hip Hop Elder's Rant. The videos are available at the Sage's Play website and I invite you to take a look at them. They are not perfect, but they are a lot of fun.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I am not a perfectionist. I do enjoy refining and improving whatever it is I am working on though. So I expect that as I continue with my YouTube explorations, my offerings will be even more fun both for me and for the viewer.

Today, I am heading over to Skylark Assisted Living to conduct my monthly group, Adventures in Aging. I plan to lead a deep relaxation experience with some music in the background. And of course, we will talk together, too.

I joined the Ashland Chamber of Commerce recently! It's part of my effort to become more locally visible and to make new friends and supporters in the community.

I did a book reading and signing at the library in town recently. That was lovely. My friend Neville, who now lives in Hawaii, arrived for it and stayed for a few days with me.  One day, we drove up Shale City Road to the Grizzly Peak trail, where wild daisies, lupine and grasses made the hillsides very beautiful.

 Composer Laura Rich and I had a wonderful meeting with Ilana Rubenfeld, who created the Rubenfeld Synergy Method. Ilana was a conductor earlier in her life, and has considerable musical background and skill. We met with her to talk about A New Wrinkle. As we left, she gave us a copy of her book The Listening Hand. I just finished reading it. A wonderful book--what a marvelous career she has had helping others heal. While she may be retired from that work (after training many others to carry it on) she brings all that experience and humor to her current life. She is a really vivid, enjoyable presence.

I am happy that she likes us and our musical revue, and am looking forward to more contact with her as time goes on and we get closer to production of the revue.

Ciao for now, dear reader. Hope your summer is blessing you with joy, relaxation, insights.

The Artist's Life: Gardens and Creative Expression

"Garden writing is often very tame, a real waste when you think how opinionated, inquisitive, irreverent and lascivious gardeners themselves tend to be. Nobody talks much about the muscular limbs, dark, swollen buds, strip-tease trees and unholy beauty that have made us all slaves of the Goddess Flora." ~Ketzel Levine's talkingplants.com


"I cultivate my garden, and my garden cultivates me." ~Robert Brault

This is my first spring in my new home. I found these Japanese quince flowering at the west side of the house yesterday and had to cut two branches to bring inside. The painting is by my daughter Sophia.

In the front garden, the roses and honeysuckle have begun sending their leaves out and the daffodils, hyacinths and tulips are in bloom. A few days ago, I had 3 yards of dark fragrant compost delivered and unloaded by a handsome, cheerful young man named Jesus. All in all, it seemed a good way to greet the spring.





The beautiful blue violet of these grape hyacinths is my favorite flower color. It's so ethereal.

I spent the winter months wrestling with masses of ivy roots and branches. That's still not completely over (perhaps it will never be done, like so many things in this life) but I did make a significant change in the garden beds there.



My daughter planted three fruit trees in the back gardens--a Gravenstein apple, a Tilton apricot and a Hungarian cherry.



Come along with me as I change the subject a little. I love this photograph I found of an old building surrounded by and crowned with green. It has the patina of oldness. Oldness is reassuring, especially in the example of old gardens, forests and cities, even ruins.

When I was younger, gardens were simply not of any interest. It was not until I began to study healing and Buddhism in my early 30s that the ecstatic beauty of gardens dawned on me.

I was writing articles then for the New Age Journal. The opportunity popped up to write a feature on master gardener Alan Chadwick by visiting his gardens in Round Valley, California.

Chadwick was a marvelous human being--dramatic, original, passionate and very attuned to the energies of nature and the garden. He was 72 when I met him. He was elegant--tall, lean and suntanned, full of energy-- with a personality that was both mesmerizing and cantankerous.

It was good to see someone that old--40 years older than me at the time--living so vividly. I still hold him as a powerful model of positive aging. Here's a photo of Chadwick when he was in his 60s.





What I remember most about my approach to those gardens Chadwick created was the palpable resonance of their energies. It was as if everything was singing, trembling and shimmering together--the flowers, vegetables and herbs, the trees and vines were an intricate composition of color, form and voices.


Hmm, I mused to myself, this is what a great garden is like-- uplifting and healing, a display of the innate holiness of nature.


If you are at all interested in either gardening or elders who are making a difference, I recommend the book Growing, Older by Joan Dye Gussow. Gussow also wrote This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader. At 81, she is considered the pioneer of the locovore movement. Her writing is humorous and inspiring. She's a terrific example of how life-enhancing it is to have a great passion.

"Hope is the lesson Nature keeps teaching me. She keeps producing. She recovers. She creates beauty out of loss. She forgives us our impatience and frustration and insistence that things turn out the way we planned. They don't. They turn out the way she planned. We need to be willing to sacrifice control to learn adaptation."

Joan Gussow, from Growing, Older: A Chronicle of Death, Life, and Vegetables

Well, I have to return to working on developing a video script and setting shots for a film clip on A New Wrinkle, our musical revue on aging. It's always astounding how much work it takes to create a well-crafted, brief piece of writing. Another form of weeding, pruning and transplanting. And it looks as if the sun is coming out and giving us a respite here between rainstorms.