Building the New Garden - Fear of Power Tools!

Once Mary and I recovered from jet lag, we began to build the new garden. Our friend, Alex, removed the compost and flattened out the area a few months earlier. Now our task was to build 6 new beds that were 3 feet wide, 10 feet long, and 18 inches high. Thank God for YouTube and this Amish guy who showed us how to brace the corners. We used 12: 2inch 8X10 and 12: 2inch 10X10 boards to build our ten-foot long beds 18 inches high.

On Tuesday I went to Lowe's to get the lumber for our project. Being an office guy I had no idea even how to buy lumber. Luckily, a friend of mine, Dale, works at Lowe's and he told me to "take a few deep breaths and he'd find someone to help me." The next thing I knew a very kind Lowe's employee said he would help me "pull the boards." I'm thinking I've seen people pull taffy but never lumber. This was going to be interesting. He also said he was glad to help me but he was really a driver and didn't know much more than I did about lumber.

We pulled all the lumber and another friendly Lowe's guy cut all the wood for me and then helped me stuff it all into my van. It barely fit! After filling our garage with wood it was time to get to work.

The first order of business was to build our bush workbench.

Our workbench in the backyard

I had two saw horses and a popup workbench I'd inherited from Dad. We put an old piece of 4 X 4 plywood on the sawhorses and then piled up old garden bed wood I'd saved on the workbench. It was ugly but effective.

The first bed took us almost four hours to build. The second took us almost two hours, but Mary almost collapsed under the weight of the finished box when we hauled it into place.

Two beds completed ready to build number 3

It was only then that the thought struck us, "This was not a permanently installed workbench. We could move it." Here you see it in place for bed number three. Note the look of relief on Mary's face. The third bed only took us about an hour to build. Halfway done, we quit for the day.

Halfway to the finish line

The next day we knocked off the other three boxes with each taking about 45 minutes to build. The last one was a bit of trouble because we were left with all of the uneven pieces. So I pulled out the saber saw, also part of my inheritance, and cut three 2X4's. Glad I only cut the wood and not some appendage.

Here's our finished product.

Feelin' good - that monkey is off our backs

The next step is to fill each box with soil and compost and get planting. Let's see how this all works out.