It LIVES!!

This little guy has me SO excited!

When we moved to Wester, the previous owners left us a perfect little garden spot.  The fence was half-a$$ed and the patch was weedy, but it could have been a going concern with a whole lot of little work.  Instead, we ignored it and it became a shoddily fenced patch of the lushest weeds in west Texas.  Go us!

Eventually, T took down the shoddy fence and made some noise about putting up a 'quality' fence.  Then... nothing.  We had a second summer of super luxe weeds and lots of vicious stickers.  And Holly adopted the area for her bathroom.  Super!

This year, I was determined to get that garden in. My grandmother (who lived in Wester) always gardened in raised beds, so I had vague notions that I would do that, too.  She used cinder blocks.  Sounded good to me, but the rest of it was still a hazy mess in my mind.  The whole thing might have stalled out right there if I hadn't serendipitously run out of things to read on my blog reader one afternoon.

I read all the way to end of a post I might normally have skimmed and stumbled onto a website about square foot gardening.  I clicked through and started reading about the methodology and was immediately sold.  No amending soil!  No rows to hoe!  High yield in a small space!  Sign me up!  (Seriously, it's like a gardening cult.  I am totally gung-ho brain-washed.)

Sounds simple, right?  And it would have been... if my darling husband hadn't been involved.  There is no simple task that the man can't make more difficult in the name of 'quality.'  My plan was to set up my cinder blocks up in the nice flat garden area and get to work.  T insisted that the blocks had to be set down into the ground or they would just wiggle all around.  Sigh.

Once we got the blocks set, it was just add Mel's Mix (a soil alternative) and go, right?  That would work if I didn't have two giant shovel-pawed-digger-dogs, but I didn't see the point in planting the garden only to have my dogs destroy it in a nanosecond.  I needed a fence. 

I got the stuff for a two-foot fence and started pounding posts.  Little did I know that I would hit bedrock a mere four inches under soil.  T didn't believe me and just pounded them harder.  And bent the lightweight posts all to hell.  Not only that, but when they hit the rock, they bent under and formed a hook so they were impossible to remove.  Yay!  We actually had to buy a post puller to get them out of the rock.

Next, we bought heavy-duty keep-the-cows-in-the-pasture fence posts.  I left the pounding up to T.  They are very tall.  Maybe I'll dress them up with bird houses somewhere down the line.  But they hold up the fencing!  And keep out the dogs!  So they are great!

The fence still needs a little work.  The big plastic lattice will be cut down into a small-ish gate.  The composter will be moved all the way up into the front corner for easier access.  I think I'll leave the gloves.  Adds a touch of class, no?

But this guy?  Is what it is all about!  So excited!

UPDATED:  I now have multiple sprouts!  So far, pumpkin, cucumber, and basil have come up from seed.  My mint and strawberry transplants are doing well, too.  Squee!