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.

belated... Easter Weekend

Well, had a little bit of a hard time finding and hten downloading all the pictures in this post, so it took awhile...

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We had a great time with Family in Seattle, well except for my brother and his girlfriend, Candace (who was sick and couldn't make it).

We first had a nice visit with Aimee's parent's, got Sam all dressed up in his Easter suit, did an egg hunt and, the best part, got a good hour nap before heading over to my sister's house where my parents were also.


Sam also got a kick out of playing with a baby doll that MaeMae had... he drug that poor doll all over the house for about an hour or so.


While at my sister's house, we went to the 6:30 Sunday morning Sunrise service, which was very cold and we were all quite tired. It was a nice morning and the sermon, although a little long for 6:30, was very good. Sam got a little restless and we walked around the park that the service was held in behind where everyone else was standing.

We got home, had some breakfast, hunted for Easter baskets, opened up presents and then did an Easter story my sister did with plastic eggs that had different things in them related to the story the kids would open up in turn.



Then we were out the door for the main church service. Sam looked so cute in his outfit.He seemed to have a good time at daycare; when we dropped him off he went right in and started playing with the toys without even needing to say goodbye to us when we went to leave. I think we may have gotten a wave, but that was all.



After church, we played a little and had a nap then sat down for a very good Easter dinner of steak, oven baked potatoes, pea-n-cheese salad and green salad. Then Ann brought out short cake and strawberries for dessert; yum. I really tried not to eat too much, but was hard and I ended up a little too full. It was totally worth it though.



Sam enjoyed watching his cousins with their remote train set. He couldn't keep from grabbing the train, so he had to watch from a distance. It was pretty cute watching him squat down behind Tyler and watch as the train went around the small track. Sam got distracted from that when we started hunting for easter eggs; Tyler and him had a good time gathering them and Sam even tried to help himself to eggs Tyler had already found, but we redirected him.



At the end, Sam just got in this groove of wanting to hug Isaac and would find him again and again for a big hug. Isaac was almost not too sure about all the attention but took it in stride and was very patient with Sam. What a great cousin!



We ended up leaving around dinner time and drove back to Portland, where we met up with some friends who had just had a baby girl. It was really good to see Robert, who has been a long-time friend of Aimee's and was the person who introduced us 9 years ago. I met Robert while we were both working for Intel. We had the pleasure of getting to know his new daughter and his wife Pam whom I have only gotten to know a little at their wedding reception. Aimee and Sam had dinner with them on a trip to Seattle they did last fall, but I didn't make that trip. Anywho... we ended up at an Applebee's in Tualatin at 9:00 at night and had fun visiting for about 2 hours before heading back home. oh, and Paula, a friend from back when Aimee and I first met showed up also. It was a fun break before driving the rest of the way home.

Progress

Seem to have made some progress on the raised garden beds lately. Got the first one's first level built and set on a gravel trench last week; leveled, etc. I got the second level of 2x6s cut to length and built today. Ended up shoveling a bunch of gravel from the front that has been causing our driveway to fill with water when it rains; also known as Lake Owosso on those days.

6 wheelbarrows full and a lot just moved to the high side of the gravel parking pad away from the road; Sam even helped for about an hour also. Found out he is strong enough to lift a full size square shovel all by himself and carry it away. Couldn't figure out where it went for a little bit...

Should have the first raised bed completed for Aimee to start planting in it by EOD tomorrow... if the landscape place is open and I can get a load of garden dirt on a Sunday. It will at least be ready for the dirt by tomorrow night.

Plane mess

Well, I got one raised garden bed worth of old deck boards planed tonight. I have a ankle high pile of wood shavings from it, but the garage smell pretty good with all the cedar. Had to pull a couple more boards off the deck to have enough longer boards. Will have to pull the rest of them off the deck to have enough for the second and third ones.

If I make the beds a little shorter, there may be two beds worth done... the one set of boards is only about 7 and a half feet long; we were looking for 8 x4 foot beds, but 7 and a half would be good enough.

I hope I don't have to go buy any new cedar boards... I guess I do have the pile in the back patio to go through also... almost forgot about that pile, but I think those boards are not over 6 feet though, since they came from the short deck on the south side of the house.

Park Fun

Here are some of the pics from the park I wrote about earlier in Park Drop. We had a great time, as I said before, despite the bonk.