GARDEN TIME!

So we decided to start a garden.... ok I decided, and Michael is going a long with it and doing lots of extra work.  Don't I have a great husband.  Anyway when we moved in to our new house last June the back yard was completely bare, just a ton of hard rocky dirt.  So what better to fill it up than a garden.

For inspiration we went to Michael's Uncle's house, he has a beautiful every fruitful garden.  He gave us some good pointers to get us started.  Originally I planned to plant right at ground level and mix in compost and potting soil.  Well last week I spent at least 3-4 days soaking the dirt and digging at it.  Much to my disappointment I was only about 4 inches deep.  This ground was ridiculously hard.  So I persuaded Michael to help make me raised garden boxes.  This was a great idea and I love them.  They are 12 ft. x 4 ft.  Michael cut the wood and I put them together.  What do you think?

The dogs love the garden boxes.... well I think it might be the soil and manure they love.  Our dogs may have an interest in gardening, but I'm afraid they might smoother it with too much love.  So we decided to build a fence to protect our investment. 

In order to put the fence in, we needed to bury posts.  Well I already said how hard the ground was, so Michael decided to rent a Two-man Auger.  That's right I said two-man.  Michael thought that a one-man auger wouldn't be strong enough for our hard ground.  So I agreed to the two-man auger even though I was a bit afraid, those things are huge, let's just say when the auger was sitting on top of the ground the handles were practically in my arm pits.  Michael said all I would have to do is weigh down the one side.  Well that is not even close to what happened.  Once that auger dug a hole WE had to pull it out and that thing was not lite. 
So much for just weighing down one side.  At the beginning I tried pulling it up with my arm strength and that wasn't working.  It got to a point where I had to squat down a put my shoulder under the handles in order to get enough lift.

I wish I would have taken a picture to show you all how big this was next to me. But this picture is of two full grown men, you can just imagine me and Michael with one of these.  And I didn't even get a hard hat! 

Well we only had 5 holes to dig and that didn't take long.  We had the auger for 4 hours and since we had plenty of time I thought it would be great to break up the ground that the raised beds would be sitting on.  Well this turned out to be exhausting.  Lifting and moving that auger over and over wore me out, but it was worth it.  Check out the ground now.... this will be great for the plants and drainage.  But next time Michael will have to get someone else to help run the auger :)

I will keep everyone updated on our progress.