I'm a do-it-yourself guy. When something needs to be done, I review the price versus the time, and decide whether or not it is cost-effective for me to do the job myself.

Through the years, as the number and variety of my daily obligations has increased, changing the oil in the car has dropped off the Honey-Do list to the Honey -- Will you drop this off at the mechanic's? List. Honey's actually happier with the second option since the car get lubed on time for a change.

In my initial painting years, building my own frames for the paintings was on the Do-It-Myself list, especially as those first years involved more cost outlay than income input. After all, I built our house and furniture through the years -- whipping out a frame for each painting should be a breeze. So I reasoned.

A logger friend with private property had Tamarack and White Fir, both of which build into strong, beautiful frames. Trial and error led me to view gold-leafed frames as the most versatile, the gold working with just about everything in my color palette to enhance the final painting.

What I didn't take into account was that it takes as much time to make a frame as it does to paint a painting,  and for each frame I built, I wasn't creating a painting.

This seems obvious in hindsight, but it took the collective wisdom of the staff at one of our galleries to convince me. "Paint," they told me.  "Paint."

So, I painted and researched frame companies, eventually deciding upon Web Picture Frames out of Eugene, OR as providing a consistently excellent product for a reasonable price, in addition to packaging the box so well that a tank running over it would damage the tank before doing anything to the frames inside.

Now, every time I finish a painting, I don't have this sinking feeling that, before the work heads out to the gallery, I have a significant number of hours ahead of me of measuring, cutting, sanding, coating, re coating, and gold leafing. I slip the painting into the frame, hang the work in its temporary abode on the studio wall, and reach for another canvas.

When my mind needs a break from the intense concentration of painting, I have found a new, art-related hobby -- building the cardboard box in which to ship the work.

More on this in the next blog.

Opalescent Sea -- Original Oil Painting by Steve Henderson of Steve Henderson Fine Art

I have always admired Adam -- you know, the one responsible for naming everything? Not only was he able to look at a rhinoceros and say, "That clearly looks like a rhinoceros -- in English, that is," he came up with real originals like dachshund, capybara, and, in a prophetic fit, the Jesus Christ Lizard.

At times I wish Adam were at my side after the latest painting has been signed, photographed, and posted to my FASO site. "So what are you going to call it?" my own Eve  -- whose name is Carolyn -- always asks.

This leads to spirited conversations of possiblities, from the deeply metaphysical (The End and Final Omega of All Things for a coastal sunset) to the folksy (Mighty Mountain Mama for a buxom hillscape) to the forlornly punned (Starfish Gazing) to the classic abstract cop-out (Studies in Scarlet and Ochre, Number 45).

Mercifully, we have stopped ourselves short of typing any of these aberrations onto the site. It has taken awhile, but we have discovered that short, to-the-point titles work best. One of my favorites is the above Opalescent Sea, since the adjective opalescent -- resembling an opal -- describes the coloration and form of the painting itself. Carolyn's favorite title is Garden Gatherings, which replaced the intiially too-cute-too-cute Kitties in the Garden.

Since I specialize in seascapes and landscapes, frequently the scene painted lends its own name, as in Chief Joseph Mountain, Elliot Bay, Palouse Falls, and Cascade Head, but this is not a fail-safe technique. Few people want Cape Deception hanging on their walls, but after a moment's thought, Saturday was a more than adequate substitution. On a roll, I came up with Sunday Morning, but have had nothing yet meriting a title like Late Monday Afternoon or Wednesday Morning Coffee and Doughnut Break. (If I did, I don't think I'd want it hanging on the studio walls, much less a client's.)

One of Carolyn's favorite techniques, when she no longer feels like tossing adjectives and nouns back and forth with me over a glass of wine, is to type the word into Microsoft Word, right click it, and look up the synonyms. Prior to our stumbling, so to speak, upon Stonework, Carolyn looked at and rejected Granite, Quarry, Brick Work, and Building Material. Masonry made the mental leap into Stonework, and thereby we have one of my favorite titles.

Passage is another favorite. In a moment of mirth, Through the Crack was tossed in the arena, along with the aforementioned Starfish Gazing, as well as Sunlight Piercing Through the Clouds and Reflecting Off the Turbulent Waters and Onto the Jagged Rocks Below -- #15. Obviously, to get to the ultimate destination, it takes a lot of trudging about.

We allow the occasional pun (Clearwater Revival, Moonlight Sail), but have placed strict limitations on ourselves with these, especially if we come up with them after the second glass of wine. Too much alliteration (Winterwood Westering Walk, Sensuous Sunset Sail) provide a laugh or two, but no serious pursuit.

Giving titles to works is one of those many afterward things that I never realized existed until I seriously pursued professional painting (see what I mean about the alliteration? It's evilly easy to ease into). How many times has Carolyn reminded me to sign a work? Put a business card on the back? Then there's the matter of photographing the work, bringing its coloration to top accuracy in PhotoShop, posting it.

And naming it.

Adam, where are you?

On the Horizon -- Original Oil Painting by Steve Henderson of Steve Henderson Fine Art

To get started on your resume, sit down at the keyboard or with a pad of paper and write out everything you can think of about yourself and your job and education history. Where did you go to school? What did you study? When did you graduate?

Over the last 10 years, what jobs have you held? What were your positions? Were there specific duties that you had?

Can you speak any foreign languages? Do you have specific computer skills? Can you type? Do you work well with people? Do you have writing skills? Speaking experience?

Write down everything, and synthesize from there. It's better to have more information than less, with the corresponding ability to winnow down the excess.

Let's say that you worked as assistant manager at HappyDay grocery. You might list it like this:

Assistant Manager • Happy Day Grocery
Dayton, Wa • 1997-2010

Worked extensively with public as well as store staff. Ordered inventory; oversaw scheduling of employees; published in-house newsletter. Trained new employees; performed light accounting duties.

Notice that the "I" is implied and left out. The listing of duties is an addendum to the job itself, necessary to describe more of what you are and what you do. If you write in the past tense ("worked," "ordered,") then write everything in the past tense. If you write in the present, then write it all in the present -- just be consistent. (As they say, it's okay to be wrong now and then, as long as you're consistent about it.)

If many of your duties in various jobs are the same, consider starting the resume with a Summary of Skills, either in paragraph or bullet form, listing out your proficiency in computer software, management experience, people skills, office duties, whatever it is that you have done a lot throughout your career and don't want to keep repeating after each job.

As far as the actual layout of your resume, remember that white space is a good thing. Your margins can be generous, and space between headings and descriptions within keep the body of the page from looking like chunks of black ants filling the area. Even if you have a lot to say, give your viewer's eyes a chance to rest. Think of yourself when faced with a printed page that has no paragraphs, but just one line after another of type. It gets exhausting.

If you list something, maintain consistency of form: order inventory; maintain books; tidy shelves is consistent, because each item in the list is stated in verb/noun format; order inventory; book maintenance; shelves are tidied is not, because the first item is verb/noun; the second is adjective/noun; and the third is passive construction.

Punctuate consistently as well. Within a list, you may or may not put a comma before the final conjuntion (speak and write Spanish, English, and German) - just pick one way of doing it and do all the lists the same way.

Make sure that there are no typos, grammatical errors, or misspellings anywhere on the resume. Even one small error leaves a bad taste with picky people like me. To this end, print off a copy of your resume and read it with pencil in hand. After you have gone through the entire resume, word by word, start at the last sentence and go through it again, backwards. You will be amazed the things you catch when you do this.

Look for space issues, as in, two spaces between words instead of one -- this is one of those hyper small things that you can catch when you read your resume backwards.

Ask a friend or relative to look through your resume and ask questions on what they see.

If you have an aspect of your work life that looks negative, such as a lot of jobs in a small amount of time, consider dropping some of the less important jobs or adding together similar jobs into one entry. As far as dates go, it is not necessary to list month and year; year alone will work, especially if the job lasted 10 months and you really don't want to advertise this fact.

Community service and volunteer jobs are valid jobs, by the way, even if you didn't get paid. They provide experience and required you to be on the spot as if you had earned a paycheck.

I'm sure I'm missing something, but this with Parts One and Two should give you enough to get started. Good luck, keep your head up, and believe in yourself.

Surf at Twilight -- Original Oil Painting by Steve Henderson of Steve Henderson Fine Art

Okay, so you've got the header on your resume, describing your name, titles, and contact information. It looks great, and now there's the small matter of filling up the empty space underneath.

For a general resume, just remember EEE -- Education, Experience, and Extras, although you don't necessarily head them this way, especially the last one. For a resume specific to an artist, you are putting in the same information, only you might divide it into headings such as Shows Entered, Representation/Galleries, Awards, Memberships/Affiliations, Collections, and so on.

If you are strong in a certain area, say Shows Entered, then showcase this; conversely, if you are not in a single Collection anywhere, then don't worry about putting this in. Beneath the headings, arrange the information by highlighting what matters to you -- if the shows are prestigious, such as International Salon of Contemporary Masterpieces, then put them in bold at the beginning of the phrase. If the venues are more impressive, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, put that first. I like to separate information by bullet points, so that an entry under the heading of Shows may look like the following:

International Salon of Contemporary Masterpieces • Dayton Museum of Art • Someplace, WY • 2010
My Thoughts (Solo Show) • Art of Excellence Gallery • Someplace, OR • 2010
Auction of the West's Best  (23rd Annual) • New and Old Gallery • Someplace, WA • 2009

In list form, whatever is first and highlighted will jump out to the person quickly skimming over the surface.

As a sidenote, maintain consistencey by formatting all of the lines within a heading the same way. If the first line in your Shows heading lists show first, then venue, city, and date, make sure that all of the lines in that heading are ordered the same. In the next, separate heading, say Awards, you may re-arrange the order, again, as long as all of the lines within that heading are consistent.

Also, regardless of what you were told in Mrs. McClintick's business course, there is no set order in which to put your headings, and again, if something makes you look less than sterling, then there is no reason to put it in -- for example, if you have no formal training, you may elect to leave out the Education heading altogether, or within the heading, describe yourself as self-taught, auto didactic, or something of a similar nature. Remember that seminars and classes qualify as education.

Whatever is your strong point, lead with this, following with headings of subsequent strength. Your goal is to present yourself as positively, accurately, and clearly as possible, so that a person wading through a pile of papers will stop and look at yours.

Here's an example: let's say that you have divided your resume into four headings: Select Shows, Awards, Representation, and Education. If your show schedule is anaemic but your education is shockingly impressive, then put Education at the top and Shows at the bottom.

Resumes, like life, are fluid things, and there is a reason why we print them on paper or send them digitally as opposed to carving them in granite: things change. Many of us, when we're first starting out, find ourselves scrabbling to find something, anything, about us or our experience that an employer would be interested in. The 16-year-old first launching into the work world lists the 4-H Livestock Show, the babysitting, and the steady paper route. The 44-year-old recently let-go middle manager does not.

An important caveat about making yourself look good: make sure that everything you list about yourself is accurate. If you taught classes in oil painting to some friends and neighbors, then you can accurately list yourself as a Private Instructor, not, however, as a Professor of Art. If you are asked about a detail in your resume and you cannot describe it without stuttering and stumbling from guilt, then leave it out or rephrase it so that you can acknowledge and justify it.

Finally, in your efforts to describe yourself, feel free to go beyond the ordinary. I had a client once applying for a management position who asked me, "Do you think that I should mention that I speak and write fluent Swedish?" While Swedish is not a language generally bandied about in small-town America, it is decidedly unusual enough to attract notice, and we set up an Additional Information heading at the bottom of the resume to list some of this person's  less conventional attributes and skills.

All of us have our quirks, and it is sometimes to our advantage to draw attention to them.

Next week: Odds and Ends.

Cascade Head -- Original Oil Painting by Steve Henderson of Steve Henderson Fine Art

Writing a resume doesn't have to be a moanfully dreadful task, but it will take work and thought. Regardless of whether you are writing it for a specifically art-related event or for a job in general, the resume's central purpose is to tell a lot about you in a minimum of space.

People reviewing the resumes generally have a stack of them to wade through -- think English teachers over the weekend with student essays on What I Did This Summer -- and you want to make sure that yours doesn't get overlooked or set to the side because it is unattractive or difficult to read.

First and foremost, make sure that your name and contact information are prominently displayed on each page, generally at the top. Sounds obvious, doesn't it? It is amazing what people leave off, especially on the second page (if you are running more than a second page, then you are either an academic presenting a Curriculum Vitae, not a resume, or you are being remarkably long-winded -- surely you can shorten the story and get to the punchline).

On resumes I prepare, I like to head the page with the person's name in a larger size -- around 18-24 points depending on the font -- large enough so that it stands out, but not so grand that it shouts. This is the place to put titles or descriptions as well -- Steve Henderson -- Fine Artist, or Steve Henderson -- ASMA Signature Member -- anything pertinent that draws the eye and defines who and what you are.

As a personal preference, I generally place a line under the name, and below that line list as much and as varied of contact information that I can supply -- some people contact exclusively by e-mail; others prefer phone; still others write; if I have no way of knowing the preferences of the selection committee, I give them everything I have.

An important caveat: when you list phone numbers, make sure that A) you have some form of answering service in case you are unable to take the call and B) no child or inarticulate grunting person will be answering that phone. With e-mail, get a new address specific to professionalism if your existing one sounds puerile or tacky, i.e., HotMamaEasyRider@yougochick.com.

Regarding what font you use, start by taking a deep breath before you peruse the options at your disposal. Always keeping  in mind that a good resume presents a lot of information in a minimum of space and is easy to read and understand, skip over the Olde English Script, beautiful as it is, and give the chiseled Egyptian hieroglyphics a toss.

Choose a maximum of two fonts: one for headings and titles, the other for text. It's fine to get by with one, differentiating your headings and titles from the text by putting the former in bold and a larger type, but if you do opt for two distinct fonts, make sure that they are reasonably different; I like a sans serif like Arial or Franklin Gothic for my headers, and Times New Roman is my perennial favorite for text. More than two fonts starts to be too many ingredients for potato soup; it's possible, but it can be vaguely irritating to the reader.

And remember this: there is no Resume Police, and you are no longer writing essays for Mrs. Polansky, your uptight, anal English teacher (why are they always English teachers?) who marked you down if your margin spaces weren't just so and if you used that horrible phrase, "the fact that . . ."

Your purpose in writing the resume is not to get an A out of Mrs. Polansky's class but to stand out in the stack -- so rules are soft, but the primary unbreakable one is to make sure that everything you do contributes to your resume being easy to read and understand. If you can, say, creatively and clearly incorporate a number of fonts, by all means do so, but the difference they make in clarity and efficiency is probably minimal at best. You can spend your time more wisely by finessing what you actually say -- your skills, background, experience, strengths, and abilities. 

Next week -- Part II -- What to Put in Your Resume

Cascade Head -- Original Oil on Canvas by Steve Henderson of Steve Henderson Fine Art

To a certain extent, I don't mind labels. One of our cannisters of bulk tea is missing a label, and I notice that, as the weeks go by, we scrupulously avoid using it.

What we are collectively worried about, I'm not sure, since it's probably some black tea similar to the Assams and Ceylons and Java blends in the other cannisters, but, because it is not specifically identified as Bond Street Blend or First Flush Darjeeling, we pass it by.

So labels aren't such bad things, used appropriately.

As artists, we are familiar with labels, identifying ourselves as impressionists or abstract expressionists, representational classicists, or, (my favorite, actually, and what I loosely consider myself) contemporary realists, with the idea of letting potential clients know what to expect when they see our work, and this in itself isn't such a bad thing.

It is when we agonize over classifying ourselves and our works that we run into problems. I think of the Salons of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, getting into serious discussions and actual quarrels over whether an artist's work was "truly" , say, impressionist or not.

"I'd say that it's 60 percent impressionist, no more," I can imagine one member arguing.

"And is that percentage sufficient to admit the artist into the Salon?" another member shoots back.

Obviously, establishments must have membership rules and regulations -- and therein lie potential problems -- but individual artists have a right to be wary about concerning themselves too much about fitting themselves into these dictates -- some of which are necessarily arbritrary as the piece of cheese gets diced smaller and smaller.

In striving to align ourselves with a particular Salon or movement's idea of what constitutes membership, we may find ourselves subtly alterning what we do and how we do it -- and not because it produces a better finished work or drives us to a higher level of skill, but because we want to be accepted into the show, or the Salon, or the group.

A little of this shifting, consciously done, is simply a matter of adjusting for marketing purposes. But a lot of this shifting, done at a subconscious level, is an adult version of junior high demographics -- the desperate ploy to fit in at all costs, one of the greatest cost being our sense of individuality and our unique perspective on things.

And, as in junior high, if we do not resist the temptation to fit in, we will find ourselves all subtly looking alike, and yet simultaneously insisting that we are uniquely different.

As artists, we should be used to not flowing in the middle of the stream. We are alike in that we look at the world differently than most people; we are different in how we choose to express what it is that we see.

I enjoy looking at the work of other artists' -- be they alive or dead -- and I learn what I can from what I see. Ultimately, however, I strive each day to move forward on my own two feet, painting what I see the way I see it, and the way I feel it should be painted.

Dory Beach -- Original Oil Painting by Steve Henderson of Steve Henderson Fine Art

A phrase you don't hear much anymore is that "there's more than one way to skin a cat."

In our politically correct and acutely sensitive age, this is obviously not a sentence one introduces into casual conversation, and it does beg reflection on whether or not there was a time during which people regularly skinned cats, and if so, why.

Regardless of its origins, the maxim is more powerful than something today's standards would find more appropriate, such as, "There's more than one way to turn off a PC than hit the 'start' button," or "There's more than one way to type a text message than use your thumbs."

In essence, there's more than one way to do just about anything, and it behoves us to get creative as we seek to reach our goals, being mindful that, the more unique and different our methods (always assuming that they are ethical and don't involve stepping on other people's faces), the more criticism and general talk we will generate from others.

Years ago, a friend of ours worked in a stifling corporate situation, one in which today's rat-sized cubicles would have seemed like plush office spaces. After years of diligent working on the side, he was finally able to launch out into his own business, one in which he has enjoyed phenomenal success by dint of his perseverence and hard work.

He told us once of the day he left: "As I packed up my things in a cardboard orange box, the people around me murmered, 'I sure wish I could do what he's doing.'

"That was sad," our friend continued. "What is sadder is that, 30 years later, they're still saying the same thing. And not only that, but they frequently imply that I was only able to make it because of special circumstances in my life that they were unable to find in their own."

In our friend's case, the special circumstances were a willingness to work hard, be creative, do some things when he didn't necessarily feel like doing them, and continue to believe in his ideas and keep working toward them. He also didn't listen much to the gloomy predictions of others.

Actually, there's another saying that addresses these issues, and it doesn't involve disturbing images: "People who say that certain things can't be done, need to get out of the way of the people who are doing them."

The Divide -- Original Oil Painting by Steve Henderson of Steve Henderson Fine Art

Generally speaking, impatience is not considered a virtue. As a naturally, incredibly, and overwhelmingly impatient person, I spent a portion of my younger years mentally castigating myself for my aggressive, get-it-done and push-it-through way of doing things.

I should be more patient, I told myself. Gentle, thoughtful, meek, understanding, compassionate, all that sort of thing. Anything but what I was.

Then I hit 40 (how many years since that event is insignificant). There is something about a woman who hits 40 -- she doesn't care anymore about what other people expect her to be or do. She has been it and done it long enough that she knows what works and what doesn't.

And I began to realize that -- while tapping my toe and getting screamingly irritated in a long line wasn't an effective way to control blood pressure -- getting on the phone and politely confronting someone pointblank who had been dithering about the answer to my pertiinent situation wasn't such a bad thing.

Mentally reviewing a longstanding social committment that just wasn't working and hadn't been for a long time, and deciding to drop it from my schedule, decreased my stress level enormously.

Analyzing a relationship and coming to the conclusion that, though Christ said to forigive another person 70 times 7 times, this did not mean that I had to actively continue to pursue a relationship with a person who literally drained my batteries -- freed me to pursue deeper, healthier interactions in other directions.

In contemplating the impatient people in my life, I see a common factor -- many of them are creative. They have drive, determination, energy, imagination, and, ironically, perseverence (which requires patience). One reason that they are impatient is because they are working so diligently and steadfastedly toward a goal or goals that they do not have time for non-mitigating factors and what they see as pointless hoops through which to jump.

At the same time, many of these people are learning to channel and control their impatience, recognizing that waiting is sometimes part of the game, and that things happen even when, well, things don't seem to be happening. Their impatience propels them forward; the wisdom they have gleaned through years of being battered about in the world causes them to breathe deep and acknowledge the wait.

I have always had the impression that the intellectual Christian writer, C.S. Lewis, was an impatient man, he himself having mentioned in his writings that his inclination tended toward this direction. I am acutely aware that it is far easier to read his writings than it would have been to sit across the desk and talk to him. But in reading his works, what jumps out is his creative, engaging mind and the depth of thought and imagination behind his thoughts and words. Impatience played its part in the total package of this amazing man.

Patience is a virtue, but impatience is an unusual, quirky, difficult-to-control gift.

Dawn -- Oil on Canvas: 42x42

My mother, an amazing woman of an age we will not discuss, keeps well and healthy into her, well, beyond thirties by eating lots of fruits and vegetables and grains and such, determining what new foods enter her life by the latest research.

Herein lies the problem.

When the story lauding broccoli came out, she added broccoli to the menu. When blueberries hit the tabloids, in they came. Olive oil, sunflower seeds, spinach, green peppers, vinegar -- they have all had their moment in the sun, and they have all been added to the daily lunch menu. I cringed when edame hit the spotlight, but she must have missed that one.

One time, watching her grimace her way through a spoonful of olive oil followed by one of vinegar, then the crunching of the greens, I asked, "Why not mix it all together and make a salad?"

"Oh, but I hate salad," she responded, then wistfully added, "How I wish I had room in my stomach for a cookie."

Other than this pressure to succumb to the Food Fetishers, my mother does not let anyone push her around, but her experience illustrates a problem that is easy to have: the They Voices. When we were in junior high, we called this peer pressure; as adults, we expected to be done with it, but this is easier to say than to do.

How much of what we do throughout the day is dictated by our impression that people are expecting us to behave a certain way?

Example: one's house. So many people, namely women, including myself, apologize profusely before the guest has set foot in the door. "It's so messy," we wring our hands in distress, in our heads visualizing the pristinely clean home of Some People, who either spend their entire life polishing the bathroom fixtures (how sad, really), or who are very good at giving the impression that they do so. Either way, all they do is make the rest of us feel bad about ourselves and resentful of them. And in all probability, the Some People, unless they have truly gone over the edge, have their messy times -- just never public ones.

If we let them, the They Voices in our heads will cause us to chase after the imagined or real expectations of others and not pursue the very real things that we are good at doing and that will ultimately fulfill us. At our jobs, we try to second guess what our superiors expect of us. When we look in our driveway at the car, we imagine the disparaging comments the neighbors may be making about our choice of transporation.

Within the religious realm, the They Voices are especially bad, urging us to get up at 4 a.m. and have our "quiet time"  (of course it's quiet at 4 a.m.; anybody with any sense is still sleeping, getting ready for the day ahead); telling us to attend this class or that, read this book and follow what it says, suspend any doubts or questions that we may have because this indicates a lack of faith, not watch this movie, and only listen to this particular type of music. The word "should" is employed a lot.

I have found it most effective to stop and think, "If I didn't worry about the thoughts or opinions of anybody else, including what I think God might be thinking (based upon other people's impresssions of what they think God would be thinking for me), what would I really want to do in this situation?"

This question, and the answering of it, has been remarkably liberating.

Oh, and regarding my mother and her desire for a cookie -- she never did add a cookie to her menu.

She added two.

Clearwater Revival -- Oil on Canvas: 12x16

Years ago, we lived in town with a small lot that we transformed into a very large garden. Once a month, we parked the car on the street so that a friend could dump a pick-up load of horse manure in our driveway; one wheelbarrow load at a time we moved this gold sludge from the front yard to the back. Our neighbors were patient and forebearing.

In addition to the horse manure, we received loads of straw, sand, gravel, lime, bark -- the wheelbarrow was in constant use, and the car pretty much lived in the street. Our neighbors continued to be patient and forebearing.

But the garden was incredible. It was small but luxuriant, our Eden and escape from urban life (as this was in a town of 6,000, one can get an idea of our tolerance level of urban life).

We dreamed of having a place in the country where, not limited by space, we could grow the garden that we were trying to cram into our city lot. And move to the country we did -- 7 acres -- plenty of space for a compost pile, a proper location for horse gold, and, of course, the garden itself.

The irony of life is such that, in our efforts to build a house ourselves, raise and homeschool four children, figure out the logistics of raising goats and chickens, and run a fine art painting business, we have had very little time to devote to the garden that we envisioned in our small lot days.

I plow up a few raised beds, pile our trusty wheel barrow with goat gold, lay down the weed barrier, and in an afternoon or two we toss in seeds. Through the season, we make sure that the garden plants are bigger than the weeds, but that's about it. Our friends in town, who plot out their garden space with a care that would make a civil engineer proud, look at us askance, in shock and irritation that we would make so little use of the resources available -- much as we looked at country dwellers when we squeezed every cubic inch of dirt out of our little city lot.

The garden, however, serves its purpose -- it produces food, which we eat. It's not the beautifully laid out estate that we envisioned when two shovels were enough to double dig our little raised beds, but it takes up the amount of time that we can give it and gives us back what we need.

My grandfather was right -- there's only so much time in a day, and some of it has to be spent sleeping. When we lived in town, the garden was our main connection to the outside world, and we treasured our time in it. Now, surrounded by tall grass, trees, the pond, and just space, it is enough to sit on the porch after a long day of working, painting, fixing things that break, chopping wood, or digging in the garden, and sip a glass a wine, secure in the knowledge that a good day's work has been put in, and it is acceptable to admit that I'm tired and I just want to sit awhile.