Getting Ready for Springtime

 Repost from February 10, 2021

We have been working on our home gardens, as weather permits.  I've worked on the raised garden beds on the west side of our home.  The area is sloped: house above, shrubs and mostly grass for 40 feet to the street below.  

To expand, I covered the grass with cardboard, placed the concrete bricks, filled the bed with home garbage, composed steer manure, bags of raised bed topsoil, straw, leaves, organic materials, etc.  Leaves cover the active composting area.  Plenty of good growing soil in a sunny west facing location.

Photos taken on February 7, 2021, Vancouver, Washington

The Spirit of Gardening

Morning Gardening Projects

Summertime afternoon temperatures are now in the 80F - 93F range.  I work outdoors on garden projects starting at 6:30 am.  I rest indoors in the afternoon and evenings.  

July Gardening: Quotes, Notes, Lore and Chores

"Summer is the time when one sheds one's tensions with one's clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit.  A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all's right with the world."
-  Ada Louise Huxtable

I worked on the area by our mailbox at the southeast edge of our suburban lot.  I weeded, planted more lavender, and placed wood bark chips on the area under the crepe myrtle tree.  My neighbor, Dick, keeps a very nice front yard and garden.

I worked on the area to the garden bed area immediately to the west of our front door.  I still have work to do to complete this morning garden project. 


"Answer July—
Where is the Bee—
Where is the Blush—
Where is the Hay?

Ah, said July—
Where is the Seed—
Where is the Bud—
Where is the May—
Answer Thee—Me—"
-  Emily Dickinson, Answer July 

From the Front Porch 1

I plan to start two series of posts about our home gardening experiences in Vancouver, Washington.  We moved here in July of 2017 from a rural home south of Red Bluff, California.  We have maintained gardening activities in all the homes we have lived for over five decades.  

The first series will be titled "From the Front Porch."  Posts in the series will be numbered.

The second series will be titled "From the Back Porch."  Posts in the series will be numbered.  

My Spirit of Gardening website has been online since 2000.  

Karen and I gardened on five acres of land 
south of rural Red Bluff, California from 1998-2017

We maintain a large sweet gum tree (Liquidambar styraciflua), in our current 2020 front yard.  It was pruned a little last spring by Clark County road crews before the street was repaved this past summer.  We enjoy this lovely large deciduous tree.  Its autumn colors are quite spectacular.  

Front Yard Gardening Project 431B

The Spirit of Gardening Website


Our Front Yard in Vancouver, Washington
Spring 2019
Front Yard Gardening Projects
Project 431
Karen and Mike Garofalo

"Good work is dignified. It develops your faculties and serves your community.  It is a central human activity.  Work, in this view: makes you honest with yourself, requires that you develop your faculties and skills, empowers you to do what you are really good at and love to do, connects you in a compassionate way with the outside world, supports the philosophy of non-destructiveness and sustainability, and integrates work with personal life and community."-  Roger Pritchard

"Once one knows what really matters, one ceases to be voluble.  And what does really matter?  That is easy: thinking and doing, doing and thinking - and these are the sum of all wisdom.  Both must move ever onward in life, to and fro, like breathing in and breathing out.  Whoever makes it a rule to test action by thought, thought by action, cannot falter, and if he does, will soon find his way back to the right road." -  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Front Yard Gardening

We have been slowly making improvements and expanding our front yard garden area.