long long ago... nicole & i grew tomatoes outside our apartment in SE ... they were really really tasty, we felt cool. later that summer nicole dragged me via bikes on a chicken coop tour around portland, the chickens and coops were awesome. even later that summer we decided to buy a home, we did. the home had a big & sunny back yard. mufe was born.
Mike is far to modest to say anything so I thought I might interject . . . Mike has great skills in picking out gifts. One of the best gifts he ever gave occurred three years ago- he dug out a 10'x5' plot on the side of our rental that was covered in 4' high gnarly weeds and a packet of tomato seeds (actually 8 packages of seeds). We learned that one seed packet has dozens of seeds and we fell in love with gardening. That is really how our garden adventure began. Ok Mike, resume story . . .
january... bought used wine barrels from raptor ridge winery in carlson (www.raptoridge.com/) to use to catch rain water for my planned watering system for the garden - $25/barrel - mike the deal hunter strikes again!! buying more next year and taking orders...
six or seven weeks ago... we began to plan our garden layout, i of course began using trusty excel, but while looking online for veggie icons to pretty it up, i came across a fantastic website ( http://www.growveg.com/ ), nicole then took over and our site plan was in place. what a great website.
six weeks ago... with a bunch of wooden stakes and some of nicoles yarn (sorry honey), we staked out our garden beds. i then took out my rusty shovel and began to remove the top layer of sod where the beds will go. if you didn't know, sod is f*%kng really heavy!.. and it doesn't roll up nice and neat like the landscapers have it on their trucks - how do they do that? what i thought would take me a few hours, took a few days. did i mention that sod is f*%king heavy. good good sweat!!
five weeks ago... the beds, the beds, the beds... ask anyone of my family members about my carpentry skills and they would all say without hesitation, what skills? mike always had a ball in his hand and never picked up a tool in his life. They would be right. so building what amounts to a bunch of sandboxes was really really cool for me... as simple as they are, i feel like i belong on HGTV ...
4 weeks ago - the dirt and the nephew ... the beds were made, the plan was in place, now we needed good growing dirt to fill the beds with. for anyone who has ever had dirt delivered, a yard of dirt is, well, a lot of freak'n dirt... we ordered 6!!! thankfully my sister was kind enough to ship me my nephew conner - sucker!!! he arrived, we fed him a ton of carbs and about 200 wheel barrel loads later, our beds had dirt and conner was spent... well it was actually me and nicole that were wiped out, conner wasn't affected at all - damn youth! PS - he kicked our butts at Wii as well...
more catching up later ....
more catching up later ....
