I just realized it's May already and I haven't posted a new journal entry in awhile. That's bound to happen sometimes, especially with a month as busy as April. Now if gardening isn't your thing, you might want to skip this entry entirely ;)

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For the past few weekends we've been busy doing garden stuff. I've planned to build some raised garden beds for quite some time, and finally got things rolling the Friday before last. After much research I decided to go for plastic lumber, which I picked up from EPS. It just so happened they had some cheaper factory seconds left and in the right quantity for my purposes. They cut up the 2x6 boards into 4 and 6 ft sections, and I took those home along with some longer 2x2s. I'm surprised I was able to fit it all in the car!

Carrie insisted there was no way I'd want to spend hours (or days?) cutting the 2x2s with a hacksaw, so I bought a cheap compound miter saw to do the job. That did indeed save me a lot of time ;) I cut the 2x2s into 18 inch stakes for the corner and side supports, and the remainder I divided into 6 inch sections to serve as joins for the long sides. Each bed would be 12 ft by 4 ft, and 11 inches high.

On the Friday night before last we ordered a bunch of vegetable, herb and flower seeds from the Seed Savers Exchange catalogue. They stock heirloom seeds, which are the kind that used to be grown and saved before hybrids took over the market and ensured that you'd have to buy more seeds every year. Seed Savers Exchange is an organization that encourages seed saving, and to that end they offer memberships to support their farms and to allow access to a huge variety of seeds offered by their members. I decided to become a member to support their cause, and to receive their three yearly publications.

While we were out and about Carrie picked some flowers for the side garden. Hopefully we'll get that one looking as nice as it did last year (see below). At the moment we've just got some mulch with a dead-looking miniature rose bush there, along with some other things sprouting up from last year's garden. Another project I had in mind was a small rose garden, so we picked up 4 hybrid-tea rose plants while we were at it. It was looking like I'd have to order those online, but we found a nearby nursery with a huge selection and much cheaper prices, so that worked out well. Here's a shot of last year's flower garden:

Last year's flower garden

I mowed the front lawn and filled in the gaps with Patchmaster (mulch, lawn seed, and fertilizer) while Carrie planted some Elephant Ear bulbs she got from her dad, along with some hummingbird/butterfly seed balls. Apparently the latter give the seeds time to germinate and prevent them from being stolen by squirrels and chipmunks. It seems to be working so far....

I worked on constructing the sides of the garden beds every night after work, joining the 6 ft sections with #2 square-headed deck screws to make 12 ft beams and then joining the beams together with a support post to make a side. For the short ends I joined two 4 ft beams with a support post at each end. The first bed took me about 4 nights to complete, and the second took half that time. It probably would've been quicker if I'd ever done any woodworking before ;)

On Thursday we carried the pieces for the first bed around back and assembled that upside-down to make it easier:

First garden bed

On Saturday we assembled the second one, flipped them both over and dug holes for the support posts before ensuring each bed was level. The garden soil I'd ordered last weekend was delivered while we were levelling the beds, which was good timing. I did as much shovelling as I could before it started raining heavily, which was just about the time I was getting sick of it. We called it quits for the day and went out to dinner at Govnor's, one of our favourite retaurants.

Beds in progress

When we got back we watched a DVD documentary entitled, The Future of Food. I first heard about it through jlundberg's blog, and I was particularly interested from my research into heirloom seeds and seed saving. It's a bit of an eye-opener learning about all the genetically modified food out there and how the US public is kept in the dark about which foods contain GM ingredients (corn is a big one). It's enough to make you very nervous about what you're eating! It also had some good special features about farmer's markets, CSAs (community supported agriculture), heirloom seeds (the kind I've ordered from Seed Saver's Exchange), and seed saving, among other things. In my opinion, if you eat, you need to see this documentary ;)

On Sunday I finished the rest of the shovelling and filled in both beds, as below. It was hard work since the dirt pile on our driveway had mostly turned to mud. Who knew mud weighed so much? ;) Carrie mostly took it easy, supervising me and taking an afternoon nap, although she did help out with raking the soil at various points.

The finished product

During construction I managed to destroy one drill bit and two screwdriver bits, as well as snapping several screws. We had to pay a quick visit to a local hardware store on Friday night for more screwdriver bits so I could keep going :)

For comparison, here's a shot of last year's humble veggie garden. The tomatoes grew pretty well, but not much else did, presumably because it was overshadowed by the side of the house:

Last year's vegetable garden

Today we received the seeds we'd ordered from Seed Savers, and the seed potatoes should be along any day now. Next weekend I'll need to work on the rose garden, mow the lawn, weed, and get some vegetable seeds started. I'll also be trying out the Tomato Success Kits from Gardener's Supply Company. Those have everything you need to grow tomatoes (other than the seeds themselves) in self-watering pots. It should be an interesting experiment....

Now I need to catch up on some story critiques and get some writing done!

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2006 Stats:

2006 Word count:	9,734
Stories written:	2
Total submissions:	19
Total acceptances:	0
Total rejections:	19
Waiting for response:	7
Books read:	4
Fiction Mags/Chapbooks read:	0
Audiobooks:	9

What I'm Reading:
Cell, Stephen King
Dogs in the Moonlight, Jay Lake
Plot & Structure, James Scott Bell
Hegemony or Survival, Noam Chomsky (audiobook)