Home Projects in January

"Soon will set in the fitful weather, with fierce gales and sullen skies and frosty air, and it will be time to tuck up safely my roses and lillies and the rest for their winter sleep beneath the snow, where I never forget them, but ever dream of their wakening in happy summers yet to be."
- Celia Thaxter

January Gardening

I pruned six roses. I dug up each rose and transplanted the roots into a new large pot. I moved six pots of roses to the nursery area in the back yard. 

I excavated and layed pavers by the front door. 

We had moved some large potted plants indoors: a lemon citrus, an avocado, a succulent, a fuchsia, etc.

I reworked the sides of the large covered patio on the east side of our house. I closed the entire fence line on the east side from the front gate to the back yard gate. Then I hung brown plastic sheets to enclose three sides and provide some additional rain protection. Two 75 watt utility lights were hung to provide worksite illumination. All sides included four level plastic storage racks to maximize storage in this covered and enclosed storage and work area outside the garage.

I started putting the the 4"x4"x8' treated posts into concrete in the ground.   

Leaving Autumn, Entering Winter

Photos around our home in Vancouver, Washington.

The Spirit of Gardening

Green Way Research

Red Bluff Backyard Springtime

"Scents bring memories, and many memories bring nostalgic pleasure. We would be wise to plan for this when we plant a garden."
- Thalassa Cruso, To Everything There is a Season, 1973

"The act of smelling something, anything, is remarkably like the act of thinking. Immediately at the moment of perception, you can feel the mind going to work, sending the odor around from place to place, setting off complex repertories through the brain, polling one center after another for signs of recognition, for old memories and old connection. "
- Lewis Thomas

"Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains; another, a moonlit beach; a third, a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years. Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth."
- Diane Ackerman

A Backyard View to the Southwest

Immediately behind our back porch, which faces due West, are four large pecan trees.  Behind them are many shrubs.  About 20 feet from the back porch, behind the shrubs, is a four foot high chain link fence and gates. 

At the south end of this enclosed garden behind the back porch are a number of trees and shrubs growing in front of a five foot high wood fence.  The largest tree in this group is a fifty foot high redwood tree that I planted in 1998.  Here is how the area looked in 2008. 

During a violent wind storm last Spring, two trees along the wooden fence broke apart and crashed to the ground.  Some fencing and shrubs were broken or damaged.  I removed all the damaged wood and repaired the fencing. 

Two weeks ago, I replanted that area with trees (gifts from Kathy Goodin) and shrubs.  The shade from the pecan trees and other trees makes it difficult for grass to grow in this area in the summer.  Here is how it now looks:

For more photographs of the results of our home landscaping projects from 1998-2008, we have a webpage on the subject. 

The Spirit of Gardening:  Quotations, Sayings, Poetry, Lore, Information.  Over 3,500 quotations arranged by 130 subjects.  Compiled by Mike Garofalo.  


"Man was not made to rust out in idleness.  A degree of exercise is as necessary for the preservation of health, both of body and mind, as his daily food.  And what exercise is more fitting, or more appropriate of one who is in the decline of life, than that of superintending a well-ordered garden?  What more enlivens the sinking mind?  What is more conducive to a long life?"
-  Joseph Breck

"Successful gardening is doing what has to be done when it has to be done the way it ought to be done whether you want to do it or not."
-  Jerry Baker 

"In his garden every man may be his own artist without apology or explanation.  Each within his green enclosure is a creator, and no two shall reach the same conclusion; nor shall we, any more than other creative workers, be ever wholly satisfied with our accomplishment.  Ever a season ahead of us floats the vision of perfection and herein lies its perennial charm."
-  Louise Beebe Wilder

Below is a photo of the small pond at the western edge of our property.  Overflow irrigation from the fields to the west of us keep this pond topped up most of the year.