When I reorganized my library a month or two back, I stumbled upon an old friend,
Mel Bartholemew. This was my very first gardening book,which I purchased in 1981. Mel's PBS show back in the day, inspired my very first garden. Although my gardening preferences have shifted over the many years since then, I still plant while keeping his methods in mind. While teaching the "Dreaming the Herbal Garden" class a few weeks back, I actually inspired myself to make some major changes this year. I had been considering revamping the garden to include a traditional PA German Four Square Garden for a few years, all the while remembering my first garden fondly. Then I stumbled upon a magazine photo that sealed the deal. This was the year!
I spent a few days measuring the newly tilled garden and sketching out some ideas on graph paper, then calculated the board length of lumber I needed. A trip to Lowe's intimindating Man World Lumber Yard was next. I decided to bring the IceMan along so as not to feel too vulnerable. He was a big help maneuvering the 12 foot boards back to the cutting station and loading 32 board pieces and 6 cedar fence posts. Lowe's happened to be pretty quiet that day, so my cutting requests were tolerated...although barely. Half way through the cutting, the machine decided to blow a fuse. The cutting machine fella rolled his eyes while taking the ten minute walk to go flip the breaker. I used that time to go find four inch galvanized wood screws. Another intimidating aisle, but I perservered and found just what I needed. Pretty soon we loaded up and brought the pile home. As you can see it all fit nicely into my truck.
Within an hour, we had the first box together......
We pre-drilled the holes in the boards so that the screws wouldn't split the wood.
We nailed on these inexpensive little 1X2's on the bottom of all the boxes. When the wood rots over time, these will be replaced instead of the more expensive 2X10's. Do I have enough nails?
Pretty soon there were four...
And by dinner time there were seven...
In just a few hours there were nearly two ~ four squares nicely matching my paper design, but a smashed fingernail, miscalculation of number of nails needed and a drill bit hopelessly stuck in a horrendous knot on a board put a finish on the day. Back to Lowe's to grab more nails and replace the MAN's drill bit before he got home from work (yikes...better grab a whole new set!) Anyway, despite the minor setbacks, this was afternoon well spent.Now comes the chore of filling the boxes with nice fluffy garden soil. So much to do, so little time ...and garden tour bus #1 will be here in exactly one month!
When I reorganized my library a month or two back, I stumbled upon an old friend, Mel Bartholemew. This was my very first gardening book,which I purchased in 1981. Mel's PBS show back in the day, inspired my very first garden. Although my gardening preferences have shifted over the many years since then, I still plant while keeping his methods in mind. While teaching the "Dreaming the Herbal Garden" class a few weeks back, I actually inspired myself to make some major changes this year. I had been considering revamping the garden to include a traditional PA German Four Square Garden for a few years, all the while remembering my first garden fondly. Then I stumbled upon a magazine photo that sealed the deal. This was the year!
I spent a few days measuring the newly tilled garden and sketching out some ideas on graph paper, then calculated the board length of lumber I needed. A trip to Lowe's intimindating Man World Lumber Yard was next. I decided to bring the IceMan along so as not to feel too vulnerable. He was a big help maneuvering the 12 foot boards back to the cutting station and loading 32 board pieces and 6 cedar fence posts. Lowe's happened to be pretty quiet that day, so my cutting requests were tolerated...although barely. Half way through the cutting, the machine decided to blow a fuse. The cutting machine fella rolled his eyes while taking the ten minute walk to go flip the breaker. I used that time to go find four inch galvanized wood screws. Another intimidating aisle, but I perservered and found just what I needed. Pretty soon we loaded up and brought the pile home. As you can see it all fit nicely into my truck.
Within an hour, we had the first box together......
We pre-drilled the holes in the boards so that the screws wouldn't split the wood.
We nailed on these inexpensive little 1X2's on the bottom of all the boxes. When the wood rots over time, these will be replaced instead of the more expensive 2X10's. Do I have enough nails?
Pretty soon there were four...
And by dinner time there were seven...
4 comments:
My gad I am exhausted. What an accomplishment!
You've been busy! It's very exciting...a new plan. Agway has bags of beautiful teeny rounded gravel stones if you're thinking of gravel for pathways.
Congrats on your motivation to redo your gardening area, Sue! It looks great and I can't wait to see the after pics now!
I'm oing to see if I can find that Dr. Frau book. Sounds very interesting!
It all looks great!! I'm impressed at all you got done in one day :)
We are doing the raised bed gardening this year also. I wish us both the best of luck :)
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