March: Mind Maps + Green Dreams

• Posted on 12 March 2022
• 0

If the magical bounty of late autumn marks the season of the witch, then the calling to order of the vernal equinox is the official season of the list. 

Whether sketching out planting plans for meadows or gardens, dream-scheming breaks (spring or otherwise), envisioning the rising potential of something just over the horizon—peeking into the consciousness like the first edge of a just-full moon, or just wrangling the endless weekly procession of meals and ingredients, the humble list can really shine the light of order on the wet slurry of an unkempt grey season.


Like so many of us, Anna and Lisa are both inveterate list makers. Unlike many of us, their "lists" often transcend the 1-2-3 crossing out of completed tasks and take on the beautiful freewheeling quality of a visualization. Anna calls them "Mind Maps" and they are literally that: a physical map of the mental load, illuminated with sketches and marginalia and often color coded with washes of watercolors or shot through with a sparkle of metallics.

Lists occasionally have the ability to transcend the everyday—perhaps you too have big garden-schemes of your own to sketch out, or you are going somewhere wonderful and want to list out what your dreams are for that time away (or, like Lisa, sketch out what needed to be done in order to trade a sap-tapped maple for a palm tree), or maybe you are beginning a journey into a new enterprise—oh what many and marvelous lists lie with that endeavor! But, most lists, at their hearts, are purely quotidian—what needs to be handled, wrangled, fetched, carried, or fed, who to call (or not call), where to be (or not be) on any given day, hour, or season. We would like to suggest that it is just these humble things that are perhaps the real heart of the whole shebang. How we spend our days is how we spend our lives, after all.

Anna + Lisa's mind-map mood board

March's share is about the tools to honor—and manifest—all of the beautiful lifting you do with your beautiful mind. Take some time and map it out: a sheepskin for your chair, a new favorite pencil in your hand, a perfect palette of our favorite pigment-rich Indigenous-led watercolor paints at your service, a parcel of luscious blank watercolor paper ready and waiting for anything (and everything) you might need to put down in writing, and more. From the farm you'll be getting the result of Lisa's best laid plans (see what we did there?): a dozen eggs and the first tender arugula roquette microgreens of the season—a purposeful overabundance of early greens—the eventual fruition of a November list made real.

Happy March, Members, beware the ides—or just write them down with a flourish. 

In community,
Anna, Lisa, Ruby, Oak, and the whole Foundry Family + Two Pony Crew