Finished 1 of 3 Raised beds

Well, I finally finished the raised bed I have been working on for over a week and Aimee got the first batch of veggies planted just before we got a really windy and rainy storm come through our area.

To summarize, I had to:

• remove cedar deck boards,
• dig up the front of my side parking area in the front to get some gravel and create some new drainage,
• plane the deck boards to remove the rough surface,
• cut them to length
• dig a trench and fill with above gravel
• screw the planed boards all together to make three boxes and
• stack and screw the three boxes together

As you can see, Sam helped out a lot along the way, working with me and beside me.

Here are some pictures of the process.



I didn't get pictures of my friend Jim helping over the weekend with hauling the garden mulch to the back yard, small pile in left of last picture, and digging up and hauling away a load of excess dirt for use in his raised beds. Now I don't have the big burm of dirt in the middle between the first bed and the gravel pile so I can actually put in the next one pretty easily. I hope it is nice this next weekend and we can haul some more dirt over to his place; I need to get rid of a lot and better to give it to someone who can use it than have to pay to dump it at the landscape place.

I ended up getting the wood chips down early on Monday, just as the wind began howeling and the rain started pouring. I thought it was hailing at first but realized it was pine needles getting stripped off the tall trees. Glad the rain waited until I was pretty much done before letting loose.

As you can see there is room for the other two raised beds between the existing one and the fence. It may be a couple more weeks before that gets started since I HAVE TO get the insulation in the bathroom and get the drywalling scheduled. That has gotten put off way too long.

But hey, I even got a couple other things done in the process of doing these:

I took a half day and got flowers planted in the front with some new barkdust to make it look nice; even trimmed the grass back about a foot so I wouldn't keep breaking off the sprinkler head that is in line, in the middle of the flowers.

Put together the treadmill I have had sitting out in the garage since Nov and made Sam a fort out of the box.

And helped Aimee lay out the quilt blocks for the quilt she is making Sam; very colorful and fun.