Digging In The Dirt.

I've been trying to play catch up this week. So many projects, so little time. Sleep got a bit behind, so I got caught up on that last night. Right now I have about 7 loads of laundry that are staring at me waiting for me to fold and put them away.

In the meantime, I have been outside digging in the dirt. The few vegetable plants that I do have are huge! It's fun to see how big they are getting.

Just a quick glimpse into what I have been working on. It involves this:

This:

And This!

I have had two pallets of retaining wall stone sitting on the cement pad on the side of my house for 2 years now, left over from the other retaining wall that I did. When I initially ordered the stones, I had thought about putting a raised bed around the base of the apple tree. I have since changed my mind on that one. Then I thought I would put in a retaining wall/raised bed where the current raised cedar bed is, against the fence. However, the fence really needs to be replaced first, which is why we put in the cedar bed instead. I would hate to put in all of that work and then have to undo it in a year or two when we put a new fence in.

So then I decided that I would put a retaining wall around my existing flower bed that wraps around the side and back of the house.  The sod is now all dug up and I have been working on laying the first course. It takes some time to make sure that the ground is level and that the stone block is level with the one next to it. I use a lot of pea gravel underneath, a rubber mallet and a level to accomplish this.

Once the bottom course is all laid out, the rest should go quite quickly.  When I am done, I hope to have a mini tutorial in order so I can show you how to do something similar.