SuperLady Sunday Check-In: Gan Eden

Note: This check-in is inspired by Leigh Ann over at The Frugal Ima who is totally awesome and basically my favorite person who lives in Ohio who I've never met in real life. Check out her blog, it has lots of great and cute stuff on it. I'm adopting her Sunday Check-In in an attempt to at least assure myself one post per week.

שמח תשמח רעים האהובים צשמחך יצירך בגן עדן מקדם

Gladden the beloved companions as You gladdened Your creatures in the garden of Eden.

For our anniversary, the Hazz bought me a garden. A whole garden from start to finish. I love him. He's so great. I wanted a garden so badly; it was such a grown up dream. Here's the story. It's a bit ridiculous.

Day 1 - Monday
The plan was to start the garden on Monday. The Hazz has off on Mondays, and I work 1/2 days. Good start, we can get going by 12pm, right? Well, we were asked by my coworkers at our community's Holocaust Center to perform for the survivors at the Speakers' Bureau Luncheon. Not something you can turn down. And why would you want to? The Hazz had the little old ladies singing along with him in Yiddish and actually out of their seat dancing. Pretty darling. I'll see if I can get some pictures.

So, we didn't really get going until 3pm on the garden. 1st stop, the garden store which happens to have the same name as our last name. We find some help and inform him we want to put in a vegetable garden. Raised or flat? Do we want to rototill? We decided on a raised bed considering our yard's ant and bee problems. We also decide on 14' x 12' which is, apparently, huge... But, we're excited, so we buy 6 bags of soil, 3 bags of manure (which led to several days worth of jokes about hauling sh*t... we're very mature), and a bag of peat. Now, if you know anything about anything, you'd know this isn't enough soil. But we didn't. More on that later.

Okay, next stop, borders. How about bricks? Three bricks high should do it for the sides says the guy at the garden store. Well, nice-patient-man-at-home-store informs us this would be around 160 bricks or roughly 1000 pounds. Hmmm... okay. How about lumber sids instead? That's much cheaper and easier to haul? We could fit those in our Corolla, right?

Wrong. Apparently, the lumber section of the store is "self-serve." Purchase inside and drive around and load wood in your car. Fourteen feet beams do not fit in a Corolla. Drive around to the front of the store again. Rent pick-up truck. Wait, where's our new insurance card? Okay, first get auto insurance faxed to office. NOW rent pick-up truck. Drive home with lumber hanging out back of truck. IN. THE. FOG. We're not talking a little fog. We're talking PEA SOUP FOG.

So, we drop off our lumber, then head back to the garden store. Yeah 6 bags isn't gonna be enough. Let's triple that quantity while we're at it. 18 bags of soil, 9 bags of manure, 3 bags of peat. How about we get our plants right away? Sounds like a good idea to me!


Inventory:

• 8 tomato plants including Homely Harry, German Green, Bavarian Black, Brandywine, Roma
• 2 cucumber plants
• 2 zucchini, 1 yellow zucchini, 1 spaghetti squash
• 1 eggplant (this is The Hazz's plant)
• 1 red raspberry, 1 golden raspberry (a FAVORITE of The Mrs. as a baby)
• 1 mint plant along with a pot for isolation
• Broccoli and Onion cheapies (we don't know if they'll make it)
• Garlic sets (protects from vampires)
• Herbs Galore: Dill, Sage, Purple Sage, Rosemary, Creeping Rosemary, Summer Savory, Lavender, Basil, Purple Basil

It's now around 8:00pm, mind you. We drive our Corolla onto the back lawn and start unloading. The Hazz mixes 2 bags of soil with 1 bag of manure while I lay out the grass cover cloth and arrange the logs. The amount of soil we purchased barely covers a thin layer. But it's a start! Woo hoo! A garden!!!!

Day 2 - Tuesday

More monsoon like weather. Foggy morning.

Evening, TORRENTIAL DOWNPOUR. Street flooding. And we're in orchestra rehearsal then picking up my cousin at the bus station. So, at around 8pm, I go outside to rescue all the plants and put them inside until they're planted. Poor little guys.

Day 3 - Wednesday
The Hazz runs back to the garden store to buy some more soil at lunch. 15 more soil, 7 more manure, 3 more peat. He had meetings and a shiva call until 8pm, so I head out with my shovel and put all of these bags in all by myself. Needless to say, I was SORE.

Day 4 - Thursday

7:30pm, we had back to the garden store. One. More. Time. 16 more soil, 7 more manure, 3 more peat. This time, we work together and the plants go in the ground! We have a garden! It's a real garden!!!!!!!!!!!! Just before the sunsets, we're watering. Hooray. :)

No, that's not snow... WI isn't THAT ridiculous... it's cottonwood or dogwood or some sort of unpleasant pollen that is flying through the air like a snowglobe.

How was YOUR week?