August 5, 2008 - A Garden is Born

Today we began tearing down the cedar fence, the one that was damaged by the windstorm of July 1. I have decided to turn this area into a garden space, as it is already mostly covered by the chips from the maple tree, and I hate to let all that sunshine go to waste just growing grass now that the tree is gone.

First we had to install a small wire fence to keep the puppies from leaving the yard (and to protect the future garden). We made it to match the earlier fence we put in around the other vegetable garden, green steel posts and green welded wire. At only two feet high, I can step over it (there is no gate into this area) but the puppies can't.

I was really surprised we got so much done in one day, as it's hot as can be outside. Son, Scott, and grandson, Kevin, came early in the morning to help, but by noon we were all crashed out, taking a siesta! They will come back tomorrow to help clean up the area, then I can call the fence builders to come in and install a brand new 6-foot high cedar fence. Hopefully, it will get done this weekend.

I'm not going to have quite as much garden space as I wanted. Mr. Husband does not see the beauty in vegetable gardens so he fought me all the way on just how wide I could make it. I wanted it at least 12 feet wide to accomodate two 4' beds and 4' of pathways (see garden plan from yesterdays blog). I think I'll end up with around 11 feet, so the walk-around bed will have to be cut down to 3 feet. It's about 38-feet long, so with the existing garden I'll still end up with plenty of veggie growing space.

The Fence Comes Down

Today in the garden I picked 3 tomatoes, two zucchini (one very large one I missed yesterday) and one crookneck squash that is a perfect size. I noticed several shriveled up, underdeveloped crooknecks and disposed of them. That is a sign of poor pollination, but there were a lot of nicely formed little ones showing, and I've been seeing a lot of bees in the garden for the past two days. I hadn't seen a single bee out there before this, so I'm not surprised things weren't being pollinated! The bees were so bad today that we couldn't sit out on the patio, and my son got stung on the chin while working on the fence.

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