Beginning at the beginning again

I love gardens.  I love gardening.  I love wildlife, flowers, critters 'n things and have had some curious, if not funny, experiences with wildlife, but looking at it from their side, I wonder how they would think of their experiences in my garden?  More than 6 kinds of bees and wasps visited the yard with a collection of others. 

I gardened organically.  I was not perfect.  I used chemicals sometimes because I did not know any other way to solve a problem, but the chemicals did affect me--and not in a good way.  I was able to reduce and eliminate chemicals by using homemade compost.  I tried composting several times, made every mistake imaginable, and still succeeded.  

I will share what worked, and what didn't work when gardening in impossible soil.  The tract where my parents moved had been alternately a horse race track, a man-made lake, and a landfill.  In the early 1960s Diablo Hacienda was built and we moved to the suburbs.  Danville was a sleepy little town with more horses than houses and where people knew each other.