Corrine Goodman is a big fan of Earth Day.
“My only desire for Earth Day would be is that it’s a month long,” said the Lutz woman, who is an avid gardener.
“We’re the caretakers of this earth,” said Goodman, whose water-saving practices earned her the 2014 Community Waterwise Award in Pasco County.
(B.C. Manion/Staff Photo)
Her yard is a work in progress — and it’s progressing quite nicely.
“This was the ugliest house on the street, when I moved in, in January of 2010,” said Goodman, who lives in Carpenter’s Run.
“There wasn’t grass. We had weeds,” she said.
Currently there’s a rather large patch in the front yard that looks somewhat bare.
That’s where the oak tree used to be, Goodman explained.
But the tree was pushing up the driveway and someone walking past tripped, so Goodman took out the tree.
The area looks somewhat sparse now, but Goodman has plans for it. She’s transplanted an ornamental cassia tree, which is a host to sulphur butterflies.
“Now that I have some sun in the front yard, I’ve put in some milkweed to attract butterflies in the front yard, as well as the backyard,” Goodman said.
In other spots in her front yard, there are splashes of color — from red amaryllis blooms, and there’s a trio of old tires she’s now using as plant containers.
Along the side yard, there’s a thriving lion’s whiskers bush — with beguiling orange blooms.
“They’re a really nice plant (for) hummingbirds, bees, butterflies,” Goodman said.
In the backyard, the fragrance of rosemary wafts through the air and Tibetan prayer flags flap in the breeze.
Goodman isn’t Buddhist, but she likes the flags.
“The mythology is every time the wind blows and the flags move, a prayer is being sent to the creator for us,” she said.
Around her yard are fully mature plants that once were mere cuttings from plants in other people’s yards.
“That beach sunflower — that was one scraggly little plant,” she said. “That’s one plant, that has spread like that.”
Her garden boasts all sorts of plants and flowers. She has roses, sages, lilies, honeysuckle, pineapple, angel trumpet and camellias, to name just a few.
And, her garden is thriving even though she uses no irrigation, no pesticides and very little fertilizer.
“I have a really nice balance of good bugs, bad bugs, so I don’t have to use pesticides.
“I don’t fertilize very much, because the mulch disintegrates.
“The only water this yard gets is from the rain barrels and from nature. I have no irrigation, no sprinkling system,” she said.
Tending the garden takes work, but for Goodman, it’s an exercise that’s good for the soul.
“This is my oasis. This is where I come.”
“When I go out and I sit in my garden in the morning, I take my coffee out and it, to me, it’s like my holy space or my sacred space.
“I enjoy the butterflies, the lizards, the cockroaches — I mean, everything has a purpose.”
She believes in the theory that one person respecting and tending the earth can affect the whole world.
“It’s the old butterfly effect — ‘If the butterfly flaps its wings in Africa, that vibration carries around the globe.’
“I truly believe that.”
Published April 22, 2015
