The Garden

Originally, I had planned on planting straight in the ground. A husband of a local church member came and tilled up the old garden spot that Uncle Ishmael and Aunt Winnie had always used. And then it got very cold. And then it rained again. And then it got very cold again. Finally, the sun came out and I went over to the spot to make a plan of exactly where I would plant my veggies.
And then I saw the rocks.
There were thousands and thousands of them.
And maybe a million more.

So I decided to go the raised vegetable bed route. The Pioneer Woman has a great tutorial on how to make one so I went to Lowes and stocked up on the supplies I needed.

I picked what seemed like a lovely spot. It was going to look very Beatrice Potter-ish.  The view was right out my bedroom window so that I could see my thriving plants first thing every morning. 

It was also right over the septic tank. Mom and I had spent the better part of a day building and leveling these bed so it was a tiny bit disheartening to have to move them. I had staked them into the ground, so I waited until I had my brothers and brothers-in-law here to help me pull them up and relocate them. And by help me, I mean they moved them while I walked beside and directed.  Good thing I was there or it would have been pure chaos. I'm sure of it.

So "we" moved them over to where the garden had been tilled earlier and the boys called it a day.

This afternoon (why I waited until the hottest part of the day to do this, I'll never know) I shoveled and shoveled and shoveled a truck bed worth of dirt into garden #1.  I don't think I've been this proud of my self for tenacity and pushing-through since I helped Grandpa break up the old concrete well with a sledge hammer. That was a good day.

Eily really came through the last five minutes and tossed some dirt in with her hands. I just don't know if I could have handled that last little bit without her help. :)

We were finally ready to plant. Hooray! We planted tomatoes, squash, zucchini, cucumbers, rosemary, and sweet potatoes. I still have some basil and cilantro that needs to be planted ASAP but as you can see in the pictures, garden # 2 still has a ways to go before it can accept any plants. 

I really wanted to get that finished this week but I have to travel to the big city to get the dirt and we are supposed to have bad weather Thursday and Friday. I may try to do it on Saturday but that's a lot of work for one day.  I also need to decide what else I want to plant. I'm trying to plant the things I spend the most money on at the grocery store. I know I want to plant green beans and onions, but that's all I can think of. Any suggestions? I would love to plant corn but I don't know if corn would work in this type of garden. 

Back in the saddle again

I hope everyone had a wonderful Memorial Day. Mom! I just realized we never put the flag on the porch. Man. I hate that we forgot that. That's the best part.

Anyway, we went to Mom and Dad's house and the girls swam and the puppies played and the whole group ate. Then we left and two chillins went to sleep on the ride home and the other went down as soon as her special bed was put together. (She had acquired a fever during the festivities.) It was a simple night. It was lovely.

A few weeks ago, Mom and I went around to a lot of stores in the area and priced the lumber for the privacy fence that we are hoping to have built. The lowest priced store had an estimate of $1000 and that was with an over-estimate of how many feet of yard we are going to cover.  When we got home last night there was a job estimate from our neighbor (that we have been waiting 2 weeks to get. grrrrr). He wanted to give us a bid for the fence and we told him that was fine but we were going to go with the lowest priced bidder. Do you know what his quote was?!!! $2650!!!!! Excuse me, mister, but I happen to know that the lumber is less than $1000 and that is a lot of moolah for labor. Especially when we are only working with $3333 and have a long list that we want to be able to check off.   Do you think that was reasonable? Am I way off on what to expect when it comes to paying for labor?  I have another man coming today and I really hope that his quote is much lower.

Jason built us a raised vegetable garden a couple of nights ago. I'm very excited about it but once we got the frame we realized that we don't have any dirt. It seems like dirt would be an easy thing to get but apparently not. By the time we get all of this figured out it will probably be fall.

What should I cook for supper?