My vision gets closer to reality

The status of the new raised beds, twenty minutes ago.

“It’s your vision!” Pedro said just now, as we laid the second raised garden bed frame into place. I was grinning like the Cheshire Cat, and actually clapped my dirty gloved hands together in pleasure.

The two rotten beds remaining from the original landscape design, when we moved here a few years ago. We learned quickly that the bed on the right gets doused in shade from the apple tree just out of the frame to the right.

In 2024, I looked unhappily at our rotting raised garden beds and knew they were destined to be replaced eventually. I also tore down the Wisteria Monster that year, which allowed me to see the cool brick pattern it had been obscuring. The bricks are in a circle on one side.

I built a temporary bed out of bricks after I saw the landscape design with raised beds fanning in a circle. In this photo, you can see that the bed in the back is completely shaded. Not the best place for vegetables.

Old plans for the landscaping that we found in the house showed that originally the circle of bricks had been ringed with multiple raised garden beds that fanned around the circle. A sun dial was apparently placed at the center. I began calling it the Sundial Garden.

This part of the back yard is prime garden territory because it is the only place that receives sun all day long. We have these beautiful trees on multiple sides and it casts a lot of shade. Our designated “garden area,” a place I call the Sunflower Garden, or the Greenhouse Garden, is not only adjacent to the west-facing fence, but there are extremely tall trees on the other side of that fence. For the non-cardinally-inclined, that means from about 1pm, the Greenhouse Garden is in shade.

I include this photo just for fun, because someone saw an old blog post and commented in horror that they thought I had showed the image of my pet as I was digging her grave. NO!! Oh gosh no, this is my silly ALIVE kitty, who needs to be in the middle of everything I do. But the comment did give me a gasp and a chuckle.

Here you can see that I have removed one raised bed and I’m preparing to move plants into that space. The blue tarp is to keep out the spring rain from the dirt I removed from the bed.

Another project I completed was to remove those round concrete discs you can see in the photo above. The beautiful flagstone pathway stopped abruptly about 8 feet back, and became round stepping stones for some reason. I found leftover flagstones piled on the property, and dug up the concrete and replaced them. It’s much more beautiful now, and consistent.

The very first step is shown above, where I dismantled the bed closest to the fence, the one in the shade, and piled dirt onto a tarpaulin. Jupyter, our cat, supervised. She insisted she would have done a better job, and then asked me to finish and pay more attention to her.

The brick temporary bed came out next. It was easy to remove. I added the dirt to the pile under the tarp.

The next step was digging up these plants and moving them to the space where I had just cleared away the old bed.

There is a building materials place nearby that re-sells building materials. I gather the lumber is discarded from other sources, so you never know what will be there, or the condition. We found 12×6 boards and found the quantity we needed, and bought them for about 1/2 the cost at Lowe’s. We managed to cram them into the Jeep – eek.

Note: My license plates. I had DRAGNZ in California, because the S was taken. Now in Oregon I have the vanity plates I wanted. Also note: how close we are to the very busy street, and the car you see is waiting at the intersection of another very busy street. Between the two streets, there is chaos out front. That is why you rarely see photos of the front of the house – I don’t like being out there for all the noise and activity and exposure.

All the squash growing in this bed are volunteers from our composting. I did not plant a thing. But we did harvest a zucchini from here before we tore it apart. It was also growing two pumpkins that we transplanted. Jury is still out on whether those volunteers will live.

My brother Ian asked if we were building coffins. That is hilarious. Also funny is that Pedro grew up in a mortuary (his father owned one and he had to work in the family business from much too early an age), and Pedro never even made the connection. As long as they sat out there, I kept thinking coffins. Also, by coincidence, I am reading Interview With A Vampire right now.

I am stapling hardware fabric to the bottom of the coffins, to keep the voles out. They are a menace.

This scene gives me distinct pleasure. I had to move and level earth to place this.

I then lined the inside with fabric, to keep the dirt inside, and shoveled some soil from under the blue tarp to keep the fabric in place.

We realized the ground slopes here. Funny what you don’t notice when it’s not important. Since we want to use all that gravel there, I raked and shoveled all the gravel out of the way. Then as you see above, I began pulling the earth down to form the next terrace. For four days, most of my effort has been earth moving. Leveling, raking, watering, shoveling. Over and over till it looks good. We set the first bed as you see above, then I had to do it again.

Here’s the image from the top once more. Bed number two has been placed, at a lower level.

Emptying the pile of dirt, finally. You can see my poor transplants. The pale green one on the left – I love it so much and I hope it lives. Also there is an azalea and a tiny peony I discovered that I didn’t even know was trying to live in a jumble of plants. I have high hopes that all these will be happy and gorgeous next spring. Also there are random apples lying around, that have dropped from the apple tree. It’s that season.

Now I can start shoveling the gravel into the pathway between the beds. I need to clear and rake and level a spot for the third bed still. We will split the dirt from the tarpaulin between the three, then purchase new good soil to put on top of all three. They aren’t done in time for this year’s garden, but that’s ok. They are now prime sunshine real estate for next years’ tomatoes, peppers, and tomatillos.

There is more real estate too, so maybe I can put a pumpkin over here. They are narrower than the old beds, and that will make it easier for me to reach them. I am so, so, so excited to see this coming together. I’ll put up a new post when it’s all done.