And to think I almost gave up...

Thursday night, while sitting on the back porch and staring out at the empty, weed filled, garden beds I convinced myself that it was too much to tackle.

I was already over analyzing what soil would be the best and had convinced myself that I didn't know much of anything about gardening. Perhaps it was already to late to plant any starts. And didn't I have enough going on? I decided I would just wait until next year and I'd be all prepared with knowledge and supplies! Fast forward 14 hours when I was at the park with my friend Jill, watching the kids play and I told her my plans to wait until next year. She wasn't going to have it. She pushed me forward and told me it didn't matter if I didn't know it all, just buy some local soil and wing it! And she was right. I told my mom later that day and she too suggested the same thing. This year could be a trial, a learning experience, I needed to do it! So Saturday morning quickly arrived and I started calling about soil. I needed it delivered asap and I found a winner. I headed to the farmer's market where I picked up 5lbs of asparagus (yum) and 5 different herb starts. (note: I have ZERO experience with herbs but I'm going to give it a shot). I arrived home and Nathan and I started to shovel away the layer of grass and weeds in our raised beds. And let me tell you, it is a PAIN in the ass. You had to shove the shovel in a couple inches repeatedly and then finally lift up and listen to the rip of all the roots of the nasty weeds that have taken over our yard. And do this over, and over, and over, and OVER again. Meanwhile, a gentleman arrived to deliver over FOUR tons of soil to our driveway. I'm pretty sure Nathan wanted to back out at that point because we knew we had to remove that soil from the driveway in the next 24 hours.
Finally, the scraping was finished, then we layered newspaper over the ground, wetting each layer with the hose, and then dumped in the soil. A big thanks to our little helper who spread the soil around with the rake. And of course, the handsome hubby hauling the soil, trip after trip.




The day quickly got away and by sunset we had only put a dent in maybe half of the dirt and we officially had nothing planted. So, blisters in all, I started scraping away and making space for raised bed no.3. Secretly I was excited by this because it only meant more space for planting. After an hour of shoveling I was halfway there to clearing the weeds. I passed out on the sofa at 9:00 from exhaustion while watching a movie with Nathan.






Sunday. Day 2 started bright and early. We had a quick cup of coffee, I went back to scraping the weeds and Nathan headed out for lumber for bed number three. By lunchtime we had the newspaper laid, half the bed finished, and all 3 boys fed. I was feeling confident we'd be done by supper time (forgetting about all that SOIL). So I headed to the nursery to get plants and left Nathan to finish making the bed and fill it with soil. Finally after hours of shoveling and 2 trips to the nursery the garden was finished! I am so excited to have it done and I have to say "it was much harder than I expected". The work involved this year, thankfully, will not be duplicated next year (making the beds, scraping weeds and moving 4 tons of soil). I am thankful for that! Even after 3 beds we still had leftover soil so I laid newspaper and poured some of the soil over our front landscaped area and I will mulch it tomorrow. And still there is more. But it's no longer in the driveway. The weekend was hard but I kept chanting in my head 'fruits of our labor, fruits of our labor'. We will soon be reaping the reward. More excitement to come...