By Hand is a monthly prompt that focuses on freeing our words by using our hands. This month, we’re exploring pruning as craeft.
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When I downloaded a sample of Craeft: An Inquiry Into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts by Alexander Langlands, I didn’t expect to like it. I don’t craft, in any sense of the word. But I liked what I read.
In chapter 1, Langlands quotes a historian named Peter Clemoes, who says Alfred the Great defined craeft in this way: “the organising principle of the individual’s capacity to follow a moral and mental life.”
What does craft (or craeft) have to do with a moral and mental life?
Over the holidays my daughter returned to a job at a commercial farm, raising flowers and herbs for sale. She brought home poinsettias, ornamental kale, snapdragons, and geraniums. When she got on a plane and headed back to school, she left the plants in my care — I, who am positively immoral when it comes to caring for green things.
To learn how to follow a moral and mental life by keeping these plants alive (aka pruning them), I went to the farm’s website, which had tips for Removing Geranium Blooms and Dead Leaves, complete with pictures. So I set to work grasping stems, removing dead blooms, sticking my fingers into soil to judge dryness.
My daughter has been gone almost two weeks. The plants are still alive. My conscience is clear; my mental state, a bit more organized.
Prompt Guidelines and Options
1. Do you have any indoor plants? If not, fetch one! It may be a while before you can get your hands on outdoor plants currently resting beneath snow.
2. Use your hands to prune buds or leaves that have passed their prime. Stick your finger in the soil and determine by feel whether or not the plant needs water.
3. If you have a plant you can’t identify, get in touch with a Master Gardener. Invite him or her over. Serve tea! Watch how they touch your plants and talk about them. Do what they do.
4. Write a poem, vignette, or story opener that springs from your craeft or pruning experience. Or write about this month of January, named after the Roman god Janus, who simultaneously looks backward and forward. Or write something entirely unexpected. (Haiku to a Hollyhock?)
That’s it! We look forward to what you create when you do it By Hand.
Photo by Caroline Ingram, Creative Commons, Flickr. Post by Megan Willome, author of The Joy of Poetry.
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Sandra Heska King says
Geraniums are one of my very favorite flowers. I used to hang pots of them (red ones, preferably) from the hooks around our white farmhouse porch. I had some hanging from a couple hooks on the patio and place some in the front window box when we first moved here. I didn’t get used to watering them often enough, and so I tossed them. Do you remember The Walton’s–that big extended family on TV? Olivia and John used to place a potted geranium on the porch rail when they wanted privacy. It worked. They had several kids.
I disposed of all live indoor greenery years ago because it was one more thing to take care of, and I was very immoral about it. I’ve been thinking about trying again.
Megan Willome says
Yes, of course I remember “The Waltons,” but I did not remember the geranium. 🙂
Indoor plants do take care. I’m in a season in my life where I have more care to give. Today it is warmer and wet, so I moved all four plants into our mini courtyard. I’ll need to bring them back in tonight, when it freezes, but I think I can summon the morality to follow through.
Sandra Heska King says
“I’m in a season in my life where I have more care to give.”
Me, too. And I’m kind of liking that I don’t need a red geranium on a porch rail. 😉
Megan Willome says
Ha!
Laura Brown says
Currently five plants indoors. The thyme is getting a little long-haired and needs to be harvested. The tiny sedum, a wedding favor from October, needs repotting. The orchid and the African violet haven’t had blooms in ages, but their leaves seem healthy and happy. I spend some time this morning plucking dried leaves and stems from a small peace lily that probably gets too much sun. The three that were thirsty have been watered, and all have been talked to, a booster shot of carbon dioxide.
Interesting that the moral and mental life (and I’d like to know more what Langlands (or Clemoes or Alexander the Great) means by that) can be developed by the manual work of caring for plants.
L.L. Barkat says
I’m with you, Laura. I wanted to hear more about that philosophy. 🙂
And I laughed out loud about your clear conscience, Megan.
Overall, I can see how manual work can help develop the moral and mental life—especially if done with great attention. There’s a saying for this: that we make and do things “with care.” That seems to suggest that there’s a level of not just attention but also compassion, or a piece of ourselves—an involvement. And it’s involvement and proximity (according to Keltner—see book club) that feed back towards compassion and “bringing the good in others to completion.”
Also, I didn’t go searching, but my mind kept running through all the sayings in daily life that have to do with hands, and that was fun.
Megan Willome says
I suspect that attention and compassion are related. When we pay attention with our hands, “take care” as you said, we become involved. I’m definitely feeling a kindness toward these plants.
Megan Willome says
Here’s the connection (which I failed to mention). Langlands talking about making traditional crafts used in taming the landscape.
Kortney Garrison says
Well, you had me at King Alfred! The story of the cakes is one of my favorites and actually underscores the relationship between our interior world and the work of the hands. (http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/King-Alfred-the-Cakes/)
And I have leggy geraniums brought inside for the winter that could use a touch of attention–both pinching back and watering.
But more to the point, this prompt sent me directly to the notebook to write a tiny scene. I knew *exactly* who would be pruning in my newborn story.
Megan Willome says
Kortney, hooray for your tiny scene!
Katie says
Megan and Kortney,
Thank you for the links!
There is always something new to learn or do in this wild, wonderful world:)
Gratefully,
Katie
Megan Willome says
Grateful you stopped by, Katie!
Katie says
Me too, Megan.
Here is a cinquain I wrote after seeing Langland’s video:
by hand
gather brambles
split stems down the middle
next, bend branch, twist into faggot
like so
& I’m definitely looking for his book, Craeft, at the library!
Megan Willome says
A cinquain! Thank you.
Debbie says
Dirt lingers
on my fingers
as I check the dampness
of the soil.
Green shoots
with hints of yellow
showing through the leaves.
I remove a dead one.
I didn’t want it
but my friend’s mother insisted.
I’ve always been horrible with plants
but somehow this one has endured
A lasting remembrance from her funeral.
Megan Willome says
This is poignant, Debbie. Thank you.