Project: Garden

Those of you who live near us (or have been to my house), know that we have an incredibly sloped back yard. This really was the only downer to this house when we bought it. We loved the house in every way, but knew the yard was going to be tricky. But we decided that the house was worth the headache of the yard. It has been two years this summer since we moved in & after 2 attempts at planting grass, we still have a very patchy yard! Think: more red clay & less grass! And we hadn't even attempted the back yard yet (because of that tricky slope!) Last year though, we did create a small garden area in the back, remember? But next to the garden is our trouble area- all red clay (not even any weeds!) and a lot of erosion each time it rained. Boo!

Well, my friend, Theresa has an awesome garden! She is a fantastic gardener & it is a hobby of hers. I will be honest & say i wish it were my hobby. Pretty much everything I know about plants & gardens I learned from her & my father in law. And what i know is nothing to write home about! But i digress! Here is her garden area:

Beautiful, right? Well she also has a sloped back yard & she has made a great yard despite that slope! Randy & I had been talking about making a garden area similar to theirs for about a year now, specifically, THIS part of their garden:

So, when it came time to plant the grass in the back yard, I decided it was time to make the garden official! Why plant grass before you define your garden area? You will just be digging it right back up! Randy obliged me, even though he knew it was going to be a lot of work for himself! Red clay is killer to dig in, trust us!

Here is garden side of our yard the morning before getting started:

We took the end off of the fence & added our first row to the end of the raised garden bed, so we didn't have to pull that back up.

The second row is parallel with the first, so we will just add another raised bed to the second row to make them match.

Oh, the digging! To make matters worse, the weather was horrible. The first day was cold & overcast, & then the second day, Randy went out on a Sunday afternoon after a big rain to complete the next row! It was wet, soggy, & in the 40s. Brrr!

We still have to cut off the tips of the posts in the second line & then add the last row of timbers to make two rows of garden. (As Randy explained, we used the "cut" method rather than "fill" which meant we had to make an extra row from the landscaping timbers!) But you get the idea! Hopefully by this weekend we will be done with the digging & creating! (Who am i kidding, RANDY will be done. I just barely helped)