Misjudged, wet, worms

So I deemed this weekend as the weekend we would redo the garden.  Usually I am pretty good at estimating how long something will take.  I figured a half a day would be sufficient to get the expanded area dug out, the border and fence posts installed and the fencing attached.  Well I misjudged the time and effort required by a mile.

The project started Saturday morning. Before it did, the game plan for the border was totally trashed and reexamined.  Because of space considerations, building the garden border and then installing a fence a half foot outside of the border would not work out well.  We would have hit the sprinkler pipe.  Ali and thrashed out various ideas.  Ali suggested that we incorporate the fence posts into the corner of the border instead of using the nifty aluminum corners I bought.  I initially resisted the idea just because I didn’t want to have the stuff I bought go to waste.  However after thinking about alternatives it turned out to be the only way to practically do it.  I would sink the poles at the corners and then attach the composite lumber to the posts with metal brackets.  It turned out that we didn’t use any of the aluminum connectors, we just attached to the posts all the way around.  I pledged I would use the corners in the rebuild of the orchard border.

So we were ready to get to work.  I pulled the tractor out and attached the lawn cart to it.  The idea was I would dump all the sod I was removing into the yard cart and then we would use it to fill in part of the one remaining ditch we have towards the back of the fenced in area.  Removing sod is not a fun job.  The grass was a combination of St Augustine and vine-like weeds which is a mess to remove.  Ali came out and helped me before she had to leave for some luncheon.  I was sweating buckets.  The humidity was off the dial and the sun was broiling me.  I chugged Gatorade like I just walked out of a desert.  My shirt was drenched with sweat.

When Ali had to go in to get ready I decided to come in and eat lunch as well.  Before I did I stripped down to my boxers and jumped in the pool.  I didn’t want to wait for Ali to bring out a swim suit, I was so hot.  It’s amazing how a minute in a pool can instantly rejuvenate you.  The water felt great and it washed away all the grime and sweat that made me feel disgusting.  So after I ate I headed back out to resume the digging on my own.  The progress of course slowed down going at it alone.  After each time I filled the yard cart I would have to drive it back 200 yards to the ditch, try to back the cart up to the spot where I wanted to dump it (more challenging than you would think), dump the cart and then hop out and shovel out what is left in the cart by hand.  Luckily Ali and I got a lot done before she left, I only had to take three or four more cart fulls of dirt back after she left.

The sky started looking very foreboding around 2pm.  I reluctantly threw stuff into the shed for safe keeping.  The skies opened up shortly after I got in the door.   It rained for awhile, seriously putting a kink into my mental time line for the project.  Finally the rain let up later in the day and I got to go back out and attach some of the border pieces.  Later the rain started up again, I worked in the rain for awhile.  By the end of Saturday I had the composite lumber attached to the fence posts on three sides.  I had hoped to have the project totally done on Saturday.  I realized I still had a long way to go.  

Saturday night we watched Semi-Pro, yet another Will Ferrell movie.  It followed the standard blue print for his flicks.  His character is a funny screw up in life that somehow manages to find success in the end.  It had a modicum of laughs.  It was nothing fantastic, not horrible, just like most of his stuff.    It was entertaining enough I guess, although I would not recommend going through the effort of renting it at a video store.  Your life will still be complete if you don’t get see it. B-.

So Sunday I got started on the garden project a bit earlier.  I wanted to get this damn thing done.  We hadn’t even gotten a chance to mow the grass yet!  Ali skipped spinning class so she could help expedite the process.  I got the last section of border attached and Ali came out for the next phase, the fence.  We had several sections of fencing left over from when we enclosed the property.  I kept them specifically for this project, knowing that we wanted to enlarge the garden for quite some time.  My original thought was we would attach one end of the fence to a post and then pull it by hand as tight as we could.  Well after our initial attempt at manually stretching the fence looked like shit I said that we had to try to stretch it with the come-a-long like we did with the main fence.  I was concerned about doing so however.  The fence posts in the garden were not supported like the pull posts we used before where you had 8 foot posts connected together with a middle H brace.  These were 6 foot line posts that were just plopped two feet in the ground.  If I applied too much pull I would easily yank the sucker out of the ground.

Using this method also introduced other problems.  Instead of using one continuous piece of fencing we would have to pull each direction one at a time, using a small piece of fencing for each side.  So I pulled the Tacoma around, slipped a pole through the fencing and attached the come-a-long to it.  I had Ali by the fence post monitoring the amount of pull she felt on it.  I cranked on the come-a-long just enough to get the fence semi-straight and then hammered it in place.  The fence was far from taut but it was better than it was by hand.  Initially I could tell Ali wasn’t thrilled that the fence wasn’t super straight but later she agreed with me that it is a garden border it’s not a big deal.   We got a little more than half way done with attaching the fence when the skies once again blackened, much earlier than normal around 11 am.  We once again threw everything back in the shed and headed inside before it started to rain, hard.  

I was frustrated.  These rain delays threw everything out of whack.  This was no quick storm.  It rained for several hours.  I made sure anything on the chore list that was inside was done.  I was chomping at the bit to get back outside and get the damn garden done!  Finally the rain let up and we were able to resume construction.  The final pull that went across the front of the garden was the most troublesome.  When I pulled it the fence was psuedo tight but when I released the tension the fence post shifted back and the fence looked floppy.  I did some quick searching in the shed and happened to see a pressure treated 2×4 that just happened to be almost the exact length we needed to wedge between the two front posts to create some support between them.  After trimming of a fraction of an inch we were able to wedge the board into place which once again applied some tension to the fencing.  It actually lined up perfectly with the top of the gate, making it look like we planned it that way all along.

So after getting the area totally enclosed we went to the inside of the garden and used some spare lumber to block holes along the bottom of the border section to inhibit grass and weeds from attempting to grow underneath the border and into the garden.  We then did some minor backfilling inside before cleaning up and calling the garden project a wrap for now.  There is still the major job of buying endless bags of dirt/organic material to fill in the areas we dug out.  I bet we will spend $200-$300 on dirt alone, there is so much to fill.  The expanded garden was much more laborious and time consuming than expected but we now have significantly more room to grow stuff.  Ali is really excited to have the room to plant a lot of different things.

So even though it was late Sunday afternoon, Ali and I took no breaks and jumped right into lawn maintenance.  She zipped around on the tractor and after I ran to the gas station to get more gas for the tractor, I manned the weed whacker and knocked down the jungle as quickly as I could.  I rewarded Ali for helping me bust ass all weekend by telling her to order a pizza from Hungry Howie’s for dinner.  She was quite excited by the prospect.

We finished up around 7pm.  We enjoyed our pizza and watched tv for the duration of the evening.  We were both spent from a weekend filled with hard, sweaty, bust ass work.  This morning when I woke up it was once again pouring.  I delayed Nicki’s walk outside until right before I left for work during a small break in the rain.  As I walked her around the front of the house I noticed there was something all over the walls of the house.  As I looked closer these things appeared to be thousands of tiny worms.  It was bizarre, I never saw anything like this before.  They were everywhere.  I have no idea where they came from or why they would decide to hang out on the walls of the house.  

I have a few pics of the garden project that I will get up there as soon as I can.  

So evidently the rumors of Brett Farve unretiring were based on truth.  So now he is pushing to get released since the Packers haven’t just blindly shit canned their new plans for a post-Farve era and welcomed Brett back with open arms.  It really is an asshole move by him IMO. Imagine if he forces his release, hooks up with another team and then SUCKS.  What a way to put a black eye on his career.  I can’t believe he is willing to walk away from his legacy as THE Packer QB for the last decade and a half just to stroke his ego one last time.  It really makes him look bad to me.  If he does come back with another team I will be finding myself doing something I have never done before, root against Brett Farve.