Longest day

Today started with getting up at 7:30 wondering where Aimee was; she had evidently opted to sleep on the couch in light of my rampant snoring when she came to bed. That got me up and going since my mind wouldn't calm back down, even though I would have normally crawled back in bed for awhile.

I started the projects for the day by getting the planer running and planing the boards for the garden bed. I had to cut down the 14 foot boards from the deck in two: 8 and a half feet and 5 and a half feet boards. This allows me to have room for the gouge out at the end of the board as it leaves the first roller and the blades dig in a little more; allowing me to get the 8 foot and 40 inch boards I need for the raised bed.

The boards planed really easy once I had them cut to length, with the exception of a couple I had to back up the depth a little bit due to some cupping that wouldn't let them feed through at the depth I had set. I re-ran these boards again at the same depth as the others, keeping track of how far back I turned the depth knob.

The melamine board I was using as an extension table in the planer, with the melamine skin worn off from planing the deck boards (please pardon my phone, it sometimes has issues corrupting pictures).

Once those were done, I went to HF to get the 12" Compound Sliding Miter Saw I have been wanting to get; I had a coupon for $119 for a saw that retails at $199 and usually never on sale for less than $149. I am pretty happy with it, with the minor exception of the saw's table not being level with the center portion of the saw that swivels with the angled cut.  I even didn't mind the tuning I had to do to get the blade square to the fence and table. oh and there was a slight adjustment i had to do with the extension arm to get it to be level with the main part of the saw table involving a hammer and a block of wood, those arms are surprisingly tough to bend. 

With the saw put together and "tuned", I turned my attention to lunch and then to preparing the garden for the last raised bed. I had to relocate the wood chips I had spread out over the ground to keep it from being so muddy. The chips moved and the landscape fabric pulled back, I started measuring where I needed to dig out for the gravel for drainage.  It was going to be tight and pretty close to the fence, so I fudged it a little ways toward the other beds and marked 6 inches wider all around for ample drainage area. I got it dug down about 4 inches and to make the area drain that much more due to the muck, I borrowed my neighbor's post hole digger and dug six holes down to the sandy soil that is below the clay surface soil.  Sam was a great help during all the digging, taking shifts to help put a shovel full of dirt in the wheelbarrow or dig out the edge of my hole. 

I only had a small amount of gravel left from the dry wells, but it was just enough to fill in the 6 holes.  I will have to go get more or steal from my driveway extension in the front. That will have to wait till tomorrow since it was getting to be dinner time and we cleaned up, ordered pizza and came inside to eat. After sitting here in my chair for a couple hours now, I can really feel that I worked hard digging in really sticky soil that weighed a ton, and the post hole digger really worked a lot of muscles that haven't been worked in a while. Translation... I hurt; wrists and hands being the worst, but my quads are a close third. I don't really understand why my quads got such a workout, but it was a day of about 8 wheelbarrows full of heavy dirt that I dumped in the front and one of gravel that got dumped in the holes. 

After the first wheelbarrow of dirt from today, the dark dirt on the ever growing pile.  

Halfway? through digging out for the gravel. 

After I was finished digging.

The picture of where the holes were roughly located.

and without the stamps so you can actually see the gravel filled in holes 

Sam and Aimee planting Marigolds in the garden beds; they are suppose to have pest repellent properties, so we thought we would try it out. (I like his nonchalant pose.)

Aimee finishing up the last of the flower beds against the back fence. She has been doing a great job weeding out the beds and making it look fresh for spring. Now to get landscape fabric down, Preen weed preventer, and some bark down to keep the weeds at bay.