My high school geometry teacher passed me out of pity. I was suspended for an embarrassing act of pigheadedness at school; he had no choice but to fail me for the midterm I was not in school to take. His passing me at semester’s end was a gift. I could not generate a theorem, as I did not understand them. I had no sense of the beauty of shapes, and how those shapes got generated. Who knew the beauty of geometry would so influence my adult life. I regret that I failed him-as I do now have a sense of space that I am able to put to paper.
Frankly, I did not have much sense at all at 17. Some of my lack of sense has persisted into my adulthood, and served me well. Meaning, I have taken on things that anyone with good sense would not. Maybe that’s what my teacher saw in me.
But back to geometry. Houses have windows, with views framed by those windows. Any object on dead center in that window frame is “on axis”. I draw a network of axis lines on my 10 scale plan first. Then I extend lines out from the corners of the house. I draw lines extending from the walks, the driveway, the porch. I draw lines describing traffic flow. I draw lots of lines. Draw the lines that describe the geometry of your house and property, and how they relate to each other. View lines are invisible geometry-they make sense once you make the transition from a drawing, to the sculpture that is a landscape. Sometimes landscape frames views. Sometimes it provides a place to be.
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What is it the right time for? That’s simple-make plans. People are good at planning. We are actually much better at planning, than dealing with what we didn’t plan for-so make use of what you are good at. We’ve all made grocery lists, given birthday parties, hosted holiday dinners, decided to have families, gone back to school, moved on. A landscape by design, which is a fancy way of saying, by plan, is planning-don’t be afraid.