November 19th, 2010 by Busy Mommy

Wow you have to love when grandparents start taking kids from you for 8 hour time slots.  My mom has been free on Thursdays lately and spending the day with Nolan- which has been just peachy for this mommy.  Today I did all sorts of things- but the fun thing I wanted to share was that I’ve made a little more progress on the garden beds that I’m building in the back yard.  Once upon a time our backyard was quite pretty.

In 2005… This was 5 years ago- man I look like a little baby!  To think it’s possible I could have had a 4 year old at this point since we’d been married for almost 5 years. Then in 2007… But by 2010 things have gotten into dissaray.  We had let things get overgrown as we had planned to turn it into a vegetable garden but hadn’t mustered the time or energy to do so…so it just sat and came to look like this…But today I got to work on making the 2nd of 2 large raised vegetable beds- they are 10’6″ long and 3’6″ wide.  I’m building them with reclaimed redwood lumber from the salvage yard-which not only is it really cheap this way, but this stuff is hearty!  They’re 2×8’s and since they’re old, they really do measure 2″ across, unlike lumber nowadays which totally skimps on the measurements.  Also they happen to be tongue-in-groove boards so they are fitting together real easily- another boon to this project.  Especially considering this is my first time building garden beds.  The boards are each only 7-8 feet long, so to create the length of 10’6″ on each side I cute a second piece to make up the difference and nail them together with these wide metal plates.  When stacking them 2 high to make the bed, I made sure to put the “joint” or break where the boards were connected on opposite sides of each other to make it stronger. Wow and I thought our little handsaw was so ugly- but in this picture it looks really cool. This is one completed bed I had made a few months ago.  The second one needs only to be nailed together now.  They are monstrously huge!  The cardboard is down to smother the weeds- taken from the book Lasagna Gardening.  The ground is completely uneven which is why the raised bed looks warped at the moment.