Garden weather:

The Dotcom Garden team and their story The team: Cassie (left), Chris. Two small, bright green sprouts were waiting for Cassie and me this morning as we made our rounds in the chilly Northern California air, coffee cup in hand, Australian Shepherd at my side. My snow peas, planted last week, are starting to come up. Iπm standing in what Iπve come to call Dotcom Garden where three dozen small lettuce plants, 8 early tomato plants, cilantro, dill, basil and 2kinds of mint have also popped up, or been dropped in, in the last 2 weeks. Thanks to the dotcom bust, my normally frantic, not-enough-time-in-a-24-hour-day Silicon Valley schedule has subsided to a m ere 2 or 3 days a week of gainful endeavor. My wife, still fully involved 10 and 12 hours a day (and weekends and evenings) in a startup, is maybe just a little bit envious. No, make that åfuriousπ. Dotcom Garden is a project: I love projects - it's the joy of serial problem-solving ≠ I think itπs a trait I share with most folks of a nerdly bent. Itπs actually not a new project: 12 years ago, I put a small, theoretically manageable container garden into an unused side yard while working at a local daily newspaper where there was no shortage of work nor overabundance of time. The garden then and now is 8 3-by-3-foot containers and a gaggle of pots ≠ only about 75 square feet, so it would be easy to keep up. For a couple of years, we enjoyed fresh tomatoes, lettuce, beets and herbs. Then I jumped from newspapers to high tech, and åbusyπ took on a new meaning and the garden languished. In the last couple weeks, Iπve weeded, cleaned up, dug out 7 years worth of tree roots, and refilled the boxes with a rich, organic soil mix. Iπve come to call the project Dotcom Garden, because the serial method of planning and executing is reminiscent of what Iπve been doing at no fewer than 7 startups in the last 3 years, either as a full-time employee or part-time advisor. And, naturally, Dotcom garden has a home page, a wireless Web cam (featuring åvirtual serenityπ), and a computer-generated garden plan. The garden is årunningπ on Mac OS X at the moment, but Iπm working on moving it to Linux, or possibly Darwin, the Open Source (and cross platform) version of Mac OS X. I like the idea of Linux running the home page, hosting the garden cam and watching the yet-to-be installed sensors (tensiometers theyπre called) because itπs a kind of organic OS that just took root and grew. And with time on my hands, I can take the hours it will likely require to find drivers for the cam, hack the Linux permissions, interface transducers, and get the network and Apache Web server running. I can also do things like take a break from hacking to plant radishes, or peppers or just carry a cup of tea to the garden, the better to sit and think, or read tomes like åFirewalls for Dummiesπ or åHow to Cook Everythingπ. In fact, I can host other underemployed dotcommers in the garden. We can talk about thing like the billions local VCs are afraid to invest ever since the Big Bust. We can ask each other if thereπs a future in the fine, mad business of inventing the future. We can note that my book on cooking is twice as long as my book on firewalls (clear justification for eating out). We can figure out how to turn a soup can into a weather-proof housing for the Wi-Fi Web cam. And all because we have the time. By Chris Gulker

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