Many, many thanks to all TWO of you who submitted entries for my recent contest. Sadly, we did not have a winner. Both Stephanie and Jane Doe guessed correctly that in the first picture, Dave was building a raised garden bed. I already have a raised vegetable bed, but I asked Dave to make another one for me so I could have a raised berry bed! I was very excited about this project!
Dave was too.
First he measured the area, making sure that three sweeps from the lawn mower to the fence would fit exactly (he’s such a think-aheader). Then he and Jack dug out the top layer of soil/grass. He started this part back in March and it took about a month of here-and-there digging to remove the top layer and go down a few inches.
Then he bought railroad ties (I guess that’s what they’re called) from Lowe’s and cut them to the correct length, placed them in, and secured them with huge bolts.
Last, he incorporated mushroom soil into both gardens. This year he also added a fence to my vegetable garden because since the Great Green Bean Massacre of 2011 I have given up on keeping the bunnies at bay, but I didn’t want to put a fence around the berry garden, because I had this picture in my mind of my children pausing from their personal studies of opera or chemistry or possibly from their housekeeping chores this summer, wandering out to the garden, then picking themselves a nice little snack of raspberries or blueberries or strawberries, and I didn’t want them hindered by a fence.
Unfortunately, the DANG bunnies are eating the strawberries, and the DANG birds are eating the blueberries. The raspberry bush is not mature enough for fruit, so time will only tell. DANG it!
And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for (or at least Stephanie and Jane Doe have):
<Drum roll>
Dave was building me a built-in bookshelf! We started with this half wall between our breakfast area and living room:
All I asked for was a bookcase, but Dave decided to make it a built-in.
After Dave removed the “cap” from the original wall, we wrote ourselves a little time capsule on the top:
Why did someone write “AGRICULTURE”? I DO NOT KNOW. Maybe it’s a little mystery for the people of the future.
Kevin at the Sherwin Williams store in Palmyra helped us match our paint PERFECTLY. He took over 35 minutes to do it, but it matched our original paint beautifully!
Original Mystery Picture…Dave was caulking the new baseboards around the bookshelf:
And finally, the finished product!
Thanks, Big D. I LOVE it!
Ah. Well, I hardly think that was necessary.
3 comments:
That looks amazing! What a fantastic idea! I could use one of those, is your Dave busy?
Did you not have any outlets on your half wall? I could go back and look at the picture but I'm to lazy to scroll.
And your gardens look so nice too! Do you have any BB guns? Maybe you could just unleash Herbie in the backyard, he'd scare anything away! With those long, sharp, pointy teeth and razor like talons he has.
Holy cow, your backyard is GINORMOUS! You should plant corn. Wait until I show John your raised beds and berry garden. John loves raised beds and raspberries, and he loves discussing raised beds and raspberries. Last year we put a net over our raspberries because of the stupid birds. My friend has blueberries and she has been using some grape kool aid concoction sprayed on the blueberries to keep the birds away. I also like Stephanie's suggestion of a BB gun. We have lots of strawberry plants but the rat bastard mice are eating all the strawberries; what should we do about that???
I love, love, LOVE the bookshelf! I'd like one too!
Now that Dave got those projects done, what's he gonna do next????
THAT is freaking AWSOME. You tell that Big Dave I said so. Seriously impressed. LOVE IT!
So tell me the benefit of a raised garden bed. Seems like a lot of effort for those of us who are clueless in such matters.
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