First of all, please note that there is a cute bunny here. It's Joe. The oldest bunny we have ever known. He's ten years old, and still quite spry. Dear Joe. Sweet bunny Joe.
Joe lives on the SouthSide of the Bird House, the corner where we moved Betty and Joe, then put in some trees. Now we want to build garden beds for veggies.
Funny bit: I tossed a rotting pumpkin in to the worm bin. I don't know how the worms are doing, but the rotting pumpkin has sprouted in one hundred different directions, so the worm bin is now a baby pumpkin nursery.
And so... for Mother's Day we are building raised beds. The baby pumpkins need room, and we want tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, corn, sunflowers, basil, cilantro, zinnias, zukes, and honeydews.
Our three half barrels are full and happy, keeping onions and flowers safe from tunnel monsters, like gophers and moles. But we need more. More veggies. More flowers. More room.
Max wants his own garden bed. Maria has her own half barrel. Alex thinks we need at least three beds exclusively for pumpkins.
I think I should be scattering cilantro seeds all over the yard. I love it when coriander flowers, then goes to seed.
The pineapple guavas that we moved from the bottom of the yard, up to our reconfigured garage side of the yard, are blooming! That was a long sentence. Sorry. Feijoa blossoms! You can eat the fleshy pink petals. They taste like a delicate, floral marshmallow.
I never did plant all of the red onions from the little nursery six pack. I gave most of them away. But each compartment had so many seedlings, that I am looking at about a dozen almost fully ripe red onions. I think I will be giving away more produce, because even on my most oniony day I cannot imagine using up twelve red onions. Though I guess they should keep... must look in to that...
Roses I can share too. Roses and onions. We are blessed! We have more roses than I can cut. This is not a problem. They are so beautiful.
Alex cannot understand why anyone would be happy with florist roses, when garden roses are so huge, and fragrant. He much prefers the homegrown variety, and so do I.
I also like poppies, sweet peas, zinnias, pansies, dahlias...
Right now we have poppies.
With raised beds, I will finally grow zinnias. I cannot recall the last time I had a place to grow zinnias.
So. We need raised beds because of the gophers, and they will be good for containing the soil and raising everything... it's a nice look. We decided to make them 4' x 4'... square, and big, but not too big. The next question was about depth. I figured about carrot depth would be good... give or take an inch. Alex estimated eighteen inches, and Geoff discussed varying heights and widths of varying wood cuts. There was debate, discussion, design, and re-design etc...
Last night at the build center we decided we would construct four boxes, and that they should be between eighteen inches high, and two feet. No one thought to bring out a tape measure. Our discussions were always punctuated with hands and gestures... About this high and then hands apart to show the "measurement." I walked away from lumber and saws with Maria. Geoff and Alex were selecting the two by twelves.
Geoff called me: "Come back here, and tell me again how deep these should be."
I had just got Maria across the entire store to the section where we could sit and read gardening books, and we could not be bothered to walk back, so I said: "Eighteen inches or 24 inches, or something. It'll be fine. It's all good."
And he said: "Are you sure?"
Because the depth of gardens beds is more my area of "expertise" than his, but now this point is arguable.
Alex and Geoff chose sixteen big boards and then had them cut. Maria and I showed up when they were just about finished cutting all those big boards. And you know what? Twenty four inches is really big. Large big. Quite deep big.
After six months of pining for raised beds, and demonstrating my "expertise" about garden beds, after two hours figuring out the details in the build store, I was somewhat reluctant to say, "Dang. Those boards are way too tall. We don't need beds that deep." So, I went a different route and said: "Super! Eight beds!"
But he caught on.
"What? This is enough for four beds."
And I said, "I don't know. I bet we can get eight beds out of all this lumber." Then I grinned sheepishly, which as it turns out is my real "expertise."
Then he fired me. "You are fired from all measuring jobs," he said. And really, I thought he kept his composure quite nicely.
Joe, we will see you tomorrow, when we spend Mother's Day in the SouthSide, putting together four, or eight, twelve, or twenty-four inch garden beds.