Garden Beds

This is a story of our raised garden beds.  We used this same space for a garden last year and it worked pretty well but it was just a mound of dirt that we grew stuff in and according to my must-have-a-plan-for-everything-in-the-yard father that wasn't good enough.  So this year we put in raised garden beds.  But first we had to build a wall.

Here's Dad building the rock wall (he's obviously missing Colorado and the million rock walls he built in our front yard there).

The reason we (well he) built the wall was so that the garden could be level because this side of the house slopes.  See how the wall gets thinner as it gets towards the house?

After the wall was finished we moved all the leftover rocks away, leveled the dirt, got more dirt, and Dad built the raised beds out of 2x4s.  We filled them with soil and were ready to start planting!  This required bringing all my starter plants down from the deck (there were a lot of them), (well there were a lot of zucchinis).

Look Sarah planted the first plant in the new garden!  It was a tomato plant of course.  Those get the place of honor in our house because dad eats like a million a day.  Not kidding.

We also have a rain barrel that I'm bugging Dad to get hooked up.  The hope is that it will provide all the water we need for the garden.  Well basically all I'm hoping is that I don't have to lug the annoying hose around and battle bushes to turn the water on and off.  I'm selfish that way haha

Here's some pictures of what we planted.  This section will be all lettuce.

In the back we'll have corn and beans. I think I'm making a dinosaur eating a block of cheese shadow puppet here . . . but I can't be too sure.

And carrots.

I know those were boring pictures but I needed to post them because I would forget what I planted if I didn't have a picture of it somewhere!  

Did I mention it was incredibly hot and muggy on Memorial day?  At this point we'd been working outside all day long and it was hot so Mom went and got the patio umbrella and had us plant in the shade.  I just think that she didn't want to get dirty hands ;) but we appreciated the shade nonetheless.

So I diligently checked my newly planted plants every. single. day. this week and of course nothing happened.  Plants take at least a week to germinate.  I know this.  I was just hoping my plants would be early bloomers (haha get it?  bloomers?  Like flowers bloom?! nevermind).  They weren't, though, to my chagrin.  But they did start sprouting when I went out to see them this morning!  And yes I understand that only my eyes desperately searching for some sort of life would be able to see the beans in the above picture.
  

We also had a renegade squash plant from last year survive our garden bed building and pop up outside the beds.  I'll leave him there for now, but your time is limited buddy!

Here are the sunflowers.  I understand why they have already started growing, I mean they have to grow at least three times taller than any other plant here!

And there random alien looking things are the beginnings of corn.  I'll be sure to post more pictures as the plants actually begin to resemble plants :)