This week my wife ….ahhem my wife and I decided to redo the entire flower bed in front of our house. First off let me start out by saying I have so much more respect for people who do landscaping or any sort of manual labor. As a musician and someone with such delicate good looks and soft silk like hands, I was a little out of my element. You have to touch the dirt? You want me to shovel rocks? Let’s just go inside and watch HGTV. So we started the process…. The house we are now living in use to belong to my mother in law. The yard and flower bed have seen better days. Months have gone by with no maintenance or interaction with people. Weeds had made themselves at home in the now weed bed. There are a few things that last forever twinkies, roaches, and ELEPHANT EARS. This picture was from 6 months ago so you can imagine the take over!
So we began digging out plants, and pulling weeds trying to save anything we could. We cleaned house..a side note: My wife has turned into some sort of freakishly determined woman, and will take out anyone who stands in the way of her accomplishing her goals. Every time I needed a break I would look at her (who is almost 8 months pregnant) running circles around me. When I was to the point of exhaustion she was just motoring right along. I would say things like, “is that the phone ringing?” Or the classic “man it looks like it’s getting dark.” Anything for a break!!…She would just give me the look and continue her mission. As if digging wasn’t enough her mom had decided to go with the light weight yet durable edging called BRICKS for the old bed. We were making a new design so of course those bricks needed to be picked up. OO OO me!!! me!! I volunteered with excitement. Finally we got it down to just dirt…Yes!!! Notice the bricks..it was a joy to stack those if I do say so myself.
Has anyone ever worked a tiller? It makes everything jiggle when you use it. If you ever need motivation to get in shape go till your yard. By this time I’m pretty sure I couldn’t go anymore but we kept pushing through it. I had my mother and father along side me as well as my friend Devin, so we weren’t alone. We then laid new soil mixed with peat moss to our freshly cleared flower bed. My wife asked me if I was finished with the bricks and followed that with now it’s time for the rocks. WOOHOO rocks that sounds like as much fun as bricks…what an amazing day. It was 100 degrees that day. I have the weirdest looking tan (sunburn) ever. They make this spray lotion that when sprayed drips down your back and keeps the dripped part protected only.
The actual new garden part was cake compared to getting rid of the old garden. This time we used an actual light weight easy to install edging (THANK YOU LOWES) and made the design we wanted…we then laid the paper down and cut holes in order to plant the new plants. We followed that with some fresh mulch and WE WERE FINALLY DONE!!!
What an exhausting process! There are so many life lessons you could take from working in your garden. I’ve heard the stories in the bible about the seeds and planting on the right soil. I’ve heard scripture speak of being rooted and staying rooted. However, more so than just hearing when I physically did the work I was able to understand the process far better. What a pain to have to start from scratch because the garden had become so over grown with weeds. Dry soil brings dead plants. In life if we wait months without maintenance we will become so overwhelmed with weeds and junk. We won’t have a chance. We won’t be able to grow. I wrote a song about that a while back. It’s called Stay. (itunes :)) We can try to plant some good plants in the bad soil amongst the weeds but we will only watch it become overwhelmed. It’s not until we clean up and add new soil that new life can begin. Here’s the thing, there is no secret formula or process that allows a garden to grow without being checked for weeds. Even though we did all this work if we would let even the fresh new garden go for months without check ups we would be right back where we started. It’s nature. It’s our flesh. It’s like when you have a break through experience and you try to live off of that one experience. Things start to happen for the negative to make you look back and realize how far away that good experience was. A one time moment cannot sustain you for life! We must daily make an effort to grow, to change, to walk in our calling. Maybe right now you are overwhelmed and dry looking for relief… A neat thing happened to us that day in the garden. After we took the time and with all energy, effort, and sweat focused on removing the weeds, refreshing the soil, and planting new plants ..At the end of what seemed like the longest hottest day…. It rained!! (we didn’t even have to water the plants, what provision)
A whole year….really? A whole year since your last blog post??
My friend made sure she really rubbed it in that it has indeed been an entire year since my last post. So first off let me just say sorry. A lot has happened during the year long absence so don’t feel like I was just sitting around. Where do I start??….. Right before my last blog I had just gotten ENGAGED!! So amazing I can’t believe she said yes! Then came the chats about when should we get married?? Next June? Sure next June sounds great….. Well next June decided to become this November, which again I’m in!! (a little background for you..My wife was not the typical bride. She didn’t have a dream of a certain type of wedding, she didn’t care where it was or who came. She just wanted to be married to ME, and let’s be honest who could blame her right? …right?) So I was on the road with a buddy of mine playing a few shows in the beautiful state of Arkansas when I get a phone call. Hey babe! (yea that’s right she calls me babe)…since we have a shower planned for when you get home on saturday why don’t we just surprise everyone and make that the wedding!!!.. Wow.. I’m in!! I bought a suit in Arkansas (great suits there) showed up on Friday got married on Saturday!! So much better than waiting a year trust me. We then moved into our first place. Since I am a famous musician it was a huge spread and when I say huge I mean 300 sq.ft. As a wedding gift to my bride I bought us another window unit for the apartment. Yea we had three units, that’s one unit per 100 sq.ft. What can I say I’m living the dream! During this time I started to write new music and gear up for my new record. What a great time that was. I seriously can not wait to share the new tunes with the world. Some have heard it already but everyone else will just have to wait till september. Sorry where was I…. engaged, married, new record…oh so since we have done everything leading up to this moment like any textbook couple would, we decided to continue our streak of awesomeness by getting pregnant! Let me remind you that I got engaged in June, married in August, started a new record in September, and got pregnant in October. So if I haven’t blogged during that time I’m sorry I was a little busy. Fast forward through the holidays with the start of a new year. 2010! I truly thought I would have a dog named Astro and a robot maid by then. Anyway..The new record is complete!! It’s called Everyone Comes From Somewhere. It is my favorite record that I have ever made. (It’s nice to have a wife and soon to be child for inspiration) I teamed up with Joe Causey to produce the record and Jack Miele and Jacque Delatour of Fudge Recording Studio to engineer the project. I stayed in New Orleans to make this record and boy did it pay off! back to life.. We just bought our first house and have started preparing ourselves for the arrival of our first baby. AVA-KATE SMITH! Her release date (musician lingo) due date is July 19th I cannot wait!! That sort of brought us past where we are so let me back up a bit. I am going to really try my best to update this blog as regularly as possible. A lot of cool things are happening with the new record as well as life in general. Please don’t critique my grammar or run-on sentences as I tend to make up my own punctuation*^^^* I am going to share about life on the road as well as life at home! I’ll have some guest (who are much hipper than I) stopping by to write on fashion and music and other life thoughts. A lot of changes will be made to the website in the next few weeks so please check back frequently. I will be laying low this summer in anticipation for the baby but will be present through social media! That sounds so professional I’ll say it again Social Media! The record will be “officially” released in September. You can follow me on twitter @thejakesmith as well as facebook pages jake smith. Well that is where I have been and I look forward to sharing with everyone where I am headed! ….and so it begins!
I love movies! I love things that inspire. I am capable of finding inspiration in areas that most people might not. It’s hard for me to walk out of a concert, a movie, a conversation without being inspired. Either by how bad what I just watched or listened to was, and how I didn’t want to be like that, or by how much it made me want to get to that level.
I have been wanting to write a post on this topic for some time now and at my last show in Michigan I ran into some friends who had already put my thoughts into a video. Perfect!!!
My friend Jason even went as far as to say he was tired of hearing people get upset by the fact that nobody noticed or said anything when that person wasn’t around for a few days, weeks, months. He said maybe your presence was just not missed. Maybe your story is so dull that it didn’t even register that you were gone. He went on to say if your life was a movie how long would it take before people were asking for their money back? Yikes!!
I just got engaged!! It was perfect. The sun was going down with the Manhattan skyline in the background, while we were walking across the brooklyn bridge. In my head I thought I saw white doves flying in slow motion behind us and every taxi that passed was playing our favorite song on the radio. I want to love like this! Like an epic movie! I want to love with the same kind of weight of love before people started to know everything about the way the world worked. I want my future wife to know that there is nothing routine, expected, or taken for granted about what it means to me to get to love her. I want this to ooze over into my day to day life. I think it is the way we were wired and yet we are told every minute, of every day, by every different avenue otherwise. I think we are all living to get to some far off certain moment and are forgetting the awesomeness of life RIGHT NOW! This sort of story is in our reach and I want to do something with my life that’s worth more than the mundane. I want a story worth living and hearing about. Do you?
I’ve had many dreams growing up and never put much thought in how I would pursue those dreams. i started writing music about four years ago. I’m not sure what I thought would happen when I decided to record my first CD. I’ve always loved music but have never really made it a priority. However, I believe that I have barely scratched the surface with what I can learn and where this can take me. The last two years have flown by and I was unprepared. I didn’t know what I wanted with all of this or how I wanted my music to sound. I just threw a lot out there to see what stuck. Some have gotten it while others have been left wanting more. I heard John Mayer talk about how he wrote all of his early songs for a certain crowd to get him big enough to actually do the music he really wanted to do. I believe that he really did that. I believe he had those skills prior to his first release. I on the other hand have put out music as I have learned it. Some have come out the way I wanted and others….not so much. I do know that I want to play music, but I want it to mean so much more. I want to be approachable. I want to be honest. I want to be deliberate in my music and my actions in achieving my goals. Each CD is a timeline. Not just in what I have gone through in my life but also where I am as a musician. I am finding a sound that is my own. I am focusing on who I am and I believe it will come across in this next group of music.
For those who are wondering what I am doing right now in regards to my career, or when I am coming out with a new CD, just know that I am at work preparing for the next season. I thank those who have been there since the beginning and have seen the potential. For those who are just coming on board welcome!
A renewed dream. A renewed focus. A Reintroduction
