Domain, Domain in my Range

One of the things I'm enjoying as I delve into the mysteries of Mother Earth's bosom, AKA dig in the dirt, is a sense of growing expertise in a particular domain of knowledge and practice. I'm a mere novice, but I'm starting to know a thing or two.

For example I now know this: There are only two kinds of pruning cuts, heading cuts and thinning cuts. I didn't know that a couple months ago. I can also look at a tree or shrub and see more or less where to apply those two cuts to help the tree grow a balanced and healthy framework. Not like a professional of course, but like someone who cares and learns. And I understand a little about meristems, the parts where plants actually grow, and about auxin, the hormone that controls where the growth occurs (but I had to look up auxin, I confess!).

I wish today I could go down to Alrie Middlebrooks nursery and learn some more, joining the event put on by the California Native Garden Foundation: "Hope for a Green Future" - But I have other work I must do today. The most I can do is provide a link, probably too late to enable any reader to attend, but you can look at the web page.

I have the feeling that I'll be participating more fully in the domain of sustainable, ecological horticulture over time. Maybe I won't, but I feel as if I will. I have a sense of direction in this. It's a very good feeling, to be on a path.

In my work as a tech writer, I am a conduit for information, and not its source. The software domain of expertise is not mine; it's just the one I serve. It's a good job, especially for a compulsive writer like me, full of good people I enjoy working with. But I do find that aspect of it frustrating.

It's a particular pleasure then for me to begin growing a domain of expertise and knowledge that I can enjoy and share, and to join a community of others interested in the same domain.

My body of knowledge is about at the stage of a cutting that's just putting out roots and beginning to absorb nutrients from the soil. Maybe, just maybe it'll become a whole plant one day.

I'm not sure I've ever been an enthusiast before, but when I notice the glazed look on a face as I explain, say, how to tell the native spurge from the non-native, I realize I'm becoming one.

(Oh yeah well there was also the time I thought that I could win the heart of a young man by explicating The Eve of Saint Agnes, a long and lushly beautiful poem by John Keats. That didn't work either.)

I can empathize with other enthusiasts more now. I never really understood birders before. Now I totally get it. Well not totally because I'm not a birder, though I'm slowly learning to differentiate the "small brown birds" that abound in the chaparral and woods about me.

Differentiation is a part of it. Everything becomes more vivid, and you see more. There's an opening-up feeling, as you learn about and can appreciate more aspects of something. It's such a deep pleasure - serving as it does that deep human need - the need to comprehend.

I only ever felt this pleasure in the domain of poetry and literature before. A life devoted to literature is my road not taken. And a dominant motif in my life has been to look back on that choice with regret.

But now the road taken diverges again, as roads do. Without knowing it really, I seem to have taken the grassier road this time, and I'm excited.

(Wilder Ranch State Park - Santa Cruz)