Whatever she wants

Jules: Mmm-mmmm. That is a tasty burger. Vincent, ever have a Big Kahuna Burger?
[Vincent shakes his head]
Jules: Wanna bite? They're real tasty.
Vincent: Ain't hungry.
Jules: Well, if you like burgers give 'em a try sometime. I can't usually get 'em myself because my girlfriend's a vegetarian which pretty much makes me a vegetarian. But I do love the taste of a good burger...

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Last fall, my wife got a bug to start a garden, which pretty much means that I was going to be starting a garden. Or at least the construction of a garden - I’ll let her tend to the daily maintenance and bask in the Zen moments of tranquility found in our backyard.

Since our yard could have doubled as a backdrop for a dystopian post-apocalyptic future, bringing a garden into the equation would be quite a task. Years of owner neglect and squalor from the days when our abode was not inhabitable by minimum government standards meant that the backyard was a treasure chest of junk. Rocks, concrete, Styrofoam, beer bottles, and other less easily identifiable (perhaps for the better) elements lay buried under the dirt and clay. Not the organic environment to grow something – certainly not something you intend to put in your mouth.

(What will I do? Inhabit it, and build a garden, apparently.)

This required raised beds. After meticulously modeling our backyard into sketchup, I was able to better understand my wife’s napkin-scribbled ideas for a Mecca of peppers, tomatoes, onions, parsnips, and even pumpkin.

The house last fall, before we realized what skeletons lay underneath. Not literal skeletons - or at least we haven't found any of those yet.

The proposed garden.

After trips to most of the home improvement stores in the greater Philadelphia region, we finally stumbled across one that was carrying cedar. Cedar because it is rot resistant (better than putting a polyurethane coat on pine). Yesterday I built the raised bed, with the capacity for 45 cubic feet of soil. Feeling satisfied, my joy turned to dismay as I realized I now had to fill that 45 cubic feet of space with the aforementioned soil. That amounts to about 1.7 tons of dirt that had to be hauled to the backyard via walking through the ground floor of the house, 100-feet, one 80lb. bag at a time. Needless to say, I’m not done yet.

Prepping the yard for the raised beds.

Emily helps level things out before going vertical.

This shirt wouldn't stay white much longer.

A third of the dirt has been laid down. The project will hopefully be finished on Tuesday.

All blog posts about repairs to the house are tagged, so if you want to look at them together, simply select the ‘home projects’ tag over on the right panel or click on the link in this sentence.