Happy Birthday to me!

Yes, I am fully aware that my birthday was in August. But yesterday, V and I started on a project that uses my birthday gift card.

As you all know, I have been starting some plants from seed. They are currently living in window sill green houses, but they are growing very quickly! I've got 2 kinds of plants started, though. So my plan was to make 2 separate beds for them to move to next. These will be mostly nursery beds - places where the plants can go from seedlings to full grown.

On the west wall of our back yard, between the blackberry bushes and the gate to the front yard, there is a spot that gets sun for most of the day. I had decided that was the spot for my Mediterranean plants. The only problem is that the bed space already had a raised border - and I wanted a slightly raised bed. (HTH pointed out that raised beds are SO much easier to work in - and he always knows the good tricks for working efficiently!)

So, here is what we did. And when I say "we", I mean me and V. We measured and planned and went to Lowes. We ended up with 18 full blocks, 18 half blocks, 180 lbs of concrete, rebar, mortar, gloves, line for levels, and a wheelbarrow. (The whellbarrow is now ServeOne property, but everything else was on my birthday card.) And, yes, we loaded that onto the carts and into the car ourselves. We then waited for the bed area to get into the shade.





























For those of you who have never poured a concrete footer for a 2 foot high flower bed(and very few people do, btw) this is something that takes a lot of prep, planning and time. The footer will be the support for the blocks that form the sides. It is mostly just there to bring the first row of blocks up to level, but we did put some rebar in to tie it to the front concrete base as well. Mixing and pouring concrete is hard work. We would never have finished before dark without the technical advice and tall person assistance of HTH. But finish it we did!






























We were a little sore this morning - not as bad as you would expect because HTH told us to take ibuprofen BEFORE starting. But, as you can see, it is curing up nicely! I'll post pics again when we have more.



This project is cool for V and I on so many levels. The excitement alone will probably get us through the block work. Then we'll just let that cure up a bit before filling it with dirt. We kept saying we wanted an upper body workout - one more example of being careful what you wish for!