Building a Garden

One of the big projects we tackled recently was building a raised garden bed for vegetables.

We drafted and redrafted plans for it, figuring out how tall and how wide and how deep, and we wound up with a very tall planter - out of the reach of the little bunnies and just high enough to make gardening very easy on my back.

It was the work of a very long day, but we built, installed, filled with dirt, and planted our seedlings last Sunday.

That poor red-stemed dogwood never stood a chance.  The plan next year is to build an identical planter that will nestle directly to the right of this one, and sooner or later bean trellises along the back to give a bit more (green) privacy to the fence.

Progress isn't always Pretty

As promised we've really knuckled down for the last few days of spring break and here we are at the weekend already.  After demolishing the large cabinet (sledgehammers are fun, but boy do my shoulders ache) Richard popped up all the terrible tiles and I came along after scooping them up.  The glue removal promises to take a couple days so we'll hopefully have the floor fully prepped for painting by next weekend.

Before:

Currently:

One section of basement tile down, three more to go!

Because the weather promises to turn stormy later today and tomorrow we're going to spend as much time  today outside.  We're taking a break from the basement and garage work to run to the building supply store to pick up lumber and dirt for my raised vegetable garden.  Here's hoping we get the bed built and filled before the rains come

Spring Break 2012

 

We did have a really wonderful trip.  Wicket met her cousin Diego, and we're pretty sure she didn't even tease him about his lack of hair.  We visited everyone's favorite restaurants to enjoy good food and conversation, went on a walk through the Arboretum, and even hit up a few Goodwill Thrifts.  It's a little sad to know that Bob and Tim will be leaving Kentucky soon, but we hope they like their new home in New England and can't wait to schedule a time to visit them out there. Wicket did fairly well on her first long car trip, but she had to check up on us from the back seat every so often just to be sure Richard was doing a good job of driving.

And so we've returned from our little jaunt down to Lexington to visit Uncle Bob and Uncle Tim and have a relaxing beginning to our spring break but now that we're back we're diving straight into work.  Today while I was taking my charges on walks through their new neighborhood park and playing a game of Monopoly Richard tackled the task of demolishing more of the basement in what should soon be a store room.

After dinner we were able to spend a couple hours around the fire pit in the yard to burn the wood scraps that resulted from said basement demolition, but we have plenty to last us through a summer of bon fires.  While we enjoyed chatting around the fire I was able to knock down more of the still unidentified shrub that stands in the way of my vegetable garden and cut it into burnable/compostable pieces.  There's still a lot of work yet to do in the yard before the garden goes in and hopefully the weather complies over the next couple days.

Happy Birthday Jennie!

Today is the birthday of one of my very best friends.

Since she's moved across the state I'm only able to see her a couple times a year, but I look forward to those visits all year long.  I cannot wait to see her a month from now, and meet the new little baby girl who came into her family this year.

Happy Birthday Jennie, I love you with all my heart!