Multiconstruct

I got back this afternoon from a strategic planning session of the Missouri Cadre for Co-Occurring Excellence. It was a really cool experience…. Right now its Elvis night in Texas and the Detroit Tigers are pitching to Elvis Andrus in the bottom of the 9th, tied bases loaded. Strike 1. Fouled one, strike 2. There’s 1 out. Earlier they had a bunch of  Elvi’s on mini bikes eating jelly donuts. Fudge, base hit. ‘Elvis did it on Elvis day”. what are you gonna do? great game….

The conference was at Innsbrook this resort in Wentzville that was pretty neat. I stayed in a condo all by my lonesome, fireplace, sliding glass door looking out on a wooded lake, 1 1/2 baths, just really excessive. They were going for seasonal food too so spinach and asparagus in every meal. A lot of their meals though just fell a little flat, chewy risotto and salty overcooked couscous. but fancy, and largely good, i’m not complaining.

The strategic planning itself was pretty interesting and i think i caught the gist of what we did to do it myself in a pinch. We were organized on a focus question which we took out of our mission statement to make the systems of care more responsive to people with complex needs. So we first identified what we would like to do on it and just made lists. We then got in diads or triads and by consensus put up what we could agree on 1/2 sheets of paper in 3-7 word statements and stuck them on a “sticky wall”. We put them together by similarities and then identified commonalities in each group and wrote those in 3-7 words. That was our vision. Than we wrote our blocks in the same fashion, individual lists diads and triads on 3-7 word cards, clusters, underlying themes, these our are  our underlying contradictions. We then problem solve those in the same way individual lists, diads and triads (we did a group with four and it wasn’t as cool), put on the board, condense by similarities, name those. Than we clustered those five things into two things. Those are our goals. finally we wrote down four quarters and split up our nine identified activities under our two goals. Very consensus based but focused and productive. Valerie our facilitator rocked.

It took all day though so couldn’t really utilize the resort. did walk by the lake and stroll through the woods in a fruitless search for morels. I did see lots of wildflowers most noticeably wild sweet william. Saw lots of others coming along, looks like they’re doing fire ecology and they’ve got a nice looking woods there at Innsbrook. I also saw a bluebird. Looked just like the license plate, thank you showme state.

When I got home i took straight to gardening. Turned my compost and scooped out a bushel. Planted my new strawberries. earlyglories? i think. extended the bed. Dad got the rhubarb in. in three years i’ll bake you a pie. It smelled really clean with the rain. the lettuces and such are coming in nice. i thinned the first round and we got some along with dandelions, wild onions, and oregano in our local greens salad for dinner.

The strawberries look like they’re really going to produce. lots of green berries. the herb garden really came in nice this year. the taragon is booming, as is the oregano and thyme as well. The chives are blooming very pretty, i’m hoping some of them go to seed and they increase. The sage has, i have a bunch of plants to dig up, if anyone wants one let me know. The bergamont also has spread nicely. Its looking sharp.

Bunnies have been a problem, took out a cabbage? and a kale. They might come back. I’m going to try and build a garden wall and plant some marigolds. There was also a stem cut off a tomato plant, but i couldn’t find a worm. So much to do. Got bulbs to plant and i have 6 horseradish i might plant up in the higher ground.

Gotta love spring and new beginnings.