The photo above is a view of the main garden from my back porch. I began gardening at age eleven, on the day my father came home from work with twelve beefsteak tomato plants in a paper cup and showed me how to plant them. He told me that he bought them from an elderly man he knew for ten cents. Sixty years later, and now in conjunction with my homesteading ambitions, gardening is a fundamental part of my life. As with all aspects of this homestead project, I try to design my activities to accommodate the elderly, bohemian gentleman that I've become who is undoubtedly going to get more elderly and hopefully more bohemian in the years ahead.

That is one of the reason, twelve years ago, that I turned to raised bed gardening. After weighing the pros and cons of this method along with comparisons to the more traditional gardening practices that I've employed over the years, I became convinced that raised beds would best enable me to continue gardening as I ride off into the sunset years. Besides, the many benefits of this gardening style, such as better soil control, improved drainage, and reduced weeding, raised beds really make for a cool looking garden. And that matters!

It seems these days that everything I do with regards to my homestead, construction, gardening, landscaping, or whatever, inevitably becomes an art project as well. In the past I wondered why it took me so long to complete the many projects I would begin and how with some, construction in particular, I became impatient and frustrated with the process. Over time I came to realize what should have been obvious sooner, something that has been obvious for years with my life in general and with my artwork in particular. I don't like following a plan and I perform best when I begin a project with just an idea, no drawings or plans, or special orders, and then make it up as I go. Since I've applied this philosophy to all my projects, everything is coming along smoothly. It's moving more slowly perhaps, but there's no hurry. Certainly I want things to get done, but at this stage of the game, I believe that my life is enriched by aspiration and effort, as much or more so than by achievement.