Catching up... New veggie garden!

With a lot of my dad's help and a little of Jan's, we got all the ice plant out by the patio and replaced it with a sweet new raised veggie box! I love it. Getting there was awful though. Apparently spiders totally love making ice plant bushes their homes. As my dad was ripping it up, spiders came pouring out onto the dirt and concrete patio as he shrugged and I screamed and stomped around on them with my clogs. *shudder*

Here is the before, almost snapped too late because my dad was ripping it up about 10 seconds after we unloaded the Home Depot supplies from the truck. Such an eager little Norwegian.

It took him no time at all to clear it up and level out the dirt. I really helped minimally here, mostly because of the spiders, partly because I was making sure Elsa wasn't putting dead grass or a spider in her mouth.

Jan arrived around this stage and helped my dad to lay down the weedblocker fabric and assemble the raised box kits. They're these ones from Home Depot and they were great. Inexpensive, nice cedar, and super easy to assemble. I like the modularity of them too.

We (they) dumped in the soil and spread out the black mulch around Linus the Lemon Tree and the bed, and then I planted the little seedlings I started in my mini greenhouse a few weeks back. We're going with lemon cucumbers in the back box, and radishes, bell peppers, zucchini and beets in the front box. I think I'll have to pull a few of those out so it's not too crowded, so it's a race to see which seedlings are the strongest and get to stay in their new home.

TA-DA! It looks so much cleaner than all that greenery from before that was spilling out over the concrete patio, and much less of a spider haven.

That white fence and garage wall are begging to be decorated somehow. We need another fence painting party.

About an hour after all the work in the garden:

Thanks Dad and Jan!