How closeness and health work together
Grenier reads every relationship along three dimensions. Closeness is the level you put someone in — Garden, Orchard, Cornfield, or Meadow — and it answers “how close is this person to me?”. Health is the grain tier — Mature, Growing, or Fallow — and it answers “am I keeping up with them?”. Interests are the topics you’ve noted or that surface from your history, and they answer “what is there to talk about?”. This article is about how the first two combine.
Closeness sets the keep-in-touch interval: Garden is your closest people at about 30 days, Orchard is regular contact at about 90 days, Cornfield is occasional but real at about 180 days, and Meadow is rare or one-sided at about 365 days. Those intervals are fixed: they come with the level, and there is no setting that changes them. When a rhythm doesn’t fit someone, move them to the level that does.
Health is scored relative to that cadence rather than on a fixed calendar. The same 60-day silence reads very differently depending on the closeness level: it pushes a Garden contact to Fallow — you’re overdue against a 30-day target — but leaves a Meadow contact comfortably Mature, since that is well inside a 365-day target. So health always means “relative to the rhythm this contact’s closeness level sets.”
Reading the two together tells you whether to act or to leave well alone. Mature and Growing mean “no action needed” at every closeness level. Fallow never does: it already means you are past the interval that comes with that person’s level, so the slower cadence has been taken into account before the tier is assigned. What varies is how much it asks of you — Fallow nudge priority rises with closeness, so a Fallow Garden contact is your single most urgent reconnect, a Fallow Cornfield contact is worth a note when you have a moment, and a Fallow Meadow contact has gone more than 365 days without a word. That last one is not a relationship sitting at its natural rhythm; it is one you kept rather than archived and then didn’t speak to for longer than that. Reach out, or archive them — both are honest answers, and Grenier would rather you pick one than drift.
The matrix below shows every combination of the four closeness levels and three tiers, with what each cell means and the nudge it implies.
Matrix pairing 4 closeness levels (Garden, 30 days; Orchard, 90 days; Cornfield, 180 days; Meadow, 365 days) against 3 health tiers (Mature, Growing, Fallow). Each cell states what the combination means and whether to reconnect or let the relationship rest. Mature and Growing mean no action is needed; every Fallow combination asks for something, because Fallow already means overdue against that contact's own cadence. Reconnect priority for an overdue (Fallow) contact rises with closeness: a Fallow Garden contact is the top reconnect, while a Fallow Meadow contact is over 365 days of silence and asks you to decide — reach out again, or archive.
Closeness sets the keep-in-touch interval; health is scored relative to that cadence.
| Closeness | Mature | Growing | Fallow |
|---|---|---|---|
| Garden30 days | On cadence — keep it up | Warming nicely | Top reconnect — overdue & close |
| Orchard90 days | Healthy | Steady | Reconnect soon |
| Cornfield180 days | Healthy | Resting fine | Worth a note |
| Meadow365 days | Healthy | Fine at rest | Over 365 days — still worth keeping? |
Reconnect priority (overdue) rises with closeness. “Move closer” is a separate signal — contact frequency persistently tighter than the level’s interval — not a health tier.
One more signal lives alongside this matrix but isn’t part of it: “move closer.” If you contact someone persistently more often than their level’s interval — say you’re messaging a Cornfield contact every few weeks — Grenier flags that the relationship may have outgrown its level and suggests moving them closer. That’s a frequency signal about closeness, not a health tier, so it never appears as Mature, Growing, or Fallow.