Garden Week #1: Working Myself Sick

So getting a garden in, even a small square foot one, is no picnic. I thought it would be much easier, especially since I already have a brick planter, so I wasn't going to have to build a box. Granted, my planter is a little bigger, and it's not exactly square, but hey, these things are minor, right? My mom and I had both done some scouting ahead of time at Home Depot, and I had learned that the soil I needed was sold there, already mixed in the right proportions and everything. Easy!

Ha!

Well, first of all, there is the problem of getting eight bags of soil, various 8 ft. long pieces of lattice, steel conduit, rebar, a composter, and several long 2x6's in a minivan. Not to mention the plants themselves. (We do have a truck, but I couldn't fit all the kids in the truck. And waiting for my husband to be available to help could take until our planting window is past!) Eventually, the problem was solved by divided my purchases into two Home Depot trips. Even still, it was interesting challenge, to say the least, to fit even half of that in the van at the same time as all four kids.

Saturday afternoon I worked like a crazy person, building my conduit frame, filling my planter, and staining and screwing together the wood grid that will divide my planter into little squares. It was exhausting and occasionally even swear-worthy (working with bent conduit is aggravating), but at the end of the day I was so proud of myself! If all went well, I would be able to get the plants in Monday morning. Then reality decided to step in and slap me around a bit.

Less than seven hours after working like a crazy person in the backyard I was in the throes of the stomach flu. Yuck. Not only that, but both my daughters had the same exact thing. There is nothing so much fun as being puking sick and having to clean up after puking kids. The joys of parenthood. Like most stomach bugs it was fairly short so by Monday evening I was feeling back to normal. I thought so, anyway. But with my general lack of sensing my own limits, I jumped right back into trying to do all my normal stuff, including making another grueling Home Depot trip and painting and hauling soil and all that. I'm paying for it now. My body is protesting and I'm so wiped out I can't face the mountain of laundry I need to tackle today.

Terence says I bring it on myself, but I just can't seem to stop once I'm trying to get a project done. Still, I think I'll be ready to plant today. Here's what it looks like so far:

This is supposed to be the "vertical garden." It's not much yet. Eventually, that's where we'll put the tomatoes and cucumbers.

This is the planter. It still needs a couple more bags of soil. (I took this picture before the 2nd Home Depot trip.) The idea is to have different kinds of plants in each square. We'll see....