Creative hands touch North Lawrence yard 

Framed and hanging on a prominent wall of Tim and Jennifer O’Brien’s family room is a quote by William Butler Yeats that Tim produced in his printmaking studio:

“Walk among long-dappled grass and pluck till time and times are done the silver apples of the moon the golden apples of the sun.”

Jennifer O’Brien is a jewelry maker who creates bracelets, which she sells at cost to CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates), an organization that assists children in foster care. CASA then sells the jewelry and profits from O’Brien’s hard work and creativity. Tim O’Brien is a printmaking instructor at the Lawrence Arts Center, “homemaker” for the couple’s two children and, of course, a gardener.

Tim sees similarities between printmaking and gardening.

“They are different expressions but expressions all the same,” he says. “In printmaking, you are given essential tools like ink, paper, wood cuts and type, and then you create. The same is true of gardening. We are given soil, seeds, water and then we use our imagination to mimic nature.”

Mimicking nature is just what this minimalist family has done. The wood pile is cleverly sheltered by a thatched roof made by Tim to keep the logs dry. This is important because burning wood provides the sole heat source for the home. The yard also contains a tree house that Tim made for his daughters to play in, and a pizza oven in the shape of a turtle that Tim, Jennifer and some friends built out of clay and wattles, which are basically woven branches.

The family dines on a patio sheltered under draping purple wisteria blooms whose scent competes with whatever is on the menu for the evening. And the menu usually consists of something grown and harvested by Tim, who estimates that 60 percent of everything the family consumes is raised by him.

He grows wheat, potatoes, sweet potatoes, tomatoes and corn in a large garden plot east of the house. On the main lot, there are black raspberries that will be plucked at their peak and made into jam. The same fate awaits the strawberries that are just beginning to bloom.

Tim loves the fertile soil of North Lawrence.

“The earth has amazing structure over here,” he says. “It is like cake. To dig in it is a dream. I just add compost and horse manure to augment the already nutrient-rich soil.”

Tim employs a unique system to keep herbs that enjoy a dry environment happy and those that like a little moisture thriving as well. He created a rock spiral planter that filters water down a crevasse to the various herbs, keeping the lavender, chives, oregano and prickly pear less moist while the mint soaks up water. The O’Brien’s use those herbs to cook up pesto that is sold at the Farmer’s Market and Au Marché, 931 Mass. They also have about 2,000 bulbs of garlic which are available at the Community Mercantile Co-op, 901 Iowa.

The O’Brien’s also have a perennial garden, which welcomes visitors to enter via a winding plank walkway created by Tim. It weaves past heirloom irises, lilies, ornamental grasses and moonflower to the doorstep of a “tea house.” The tea house is also made of clay and wattles, and was originally a chicken coop.

But it has become more of an experiment in making use of the earth for architectural purposes; the O’Brien’s are considering building an entire home in this style. And why not? These artists not only receive inspiration from gardening and the earth, but they use the earth for survival. And that’s an art form in itself.

originally printed in the Lawrence Journal World

Photos: 1, 2