Planting time

With the boxes finished and filled it was time to do some planting and put up the fence.

Part of planting was done from seed, part of it from transplants purchased from various places. I figured that since we got a later start on planting this year, instead of doing it all from seed, we would get some started right away with plants.

The next step was to figure out where we were going to plant everything and how many of we were going to plant in each square. By looking at how far apart the plants need to be "thinned" to when from seed, or how far apart the transplants need to be planted, we were able to figure out how many in each box... tomatoes - one per square. Carrots, 9 per square. But then we had to keep in mind those plants that needed extra support or something to climb up would need to be planted closest to the fence. Too much to think about!!

While I started some of the planting from seed, John tackled trying to get the fence post put in so that we could get the fence up. Best to get that up BEFORE we actually get the other plants transplanted - leave it open overnight and the deer will have a feast in my backyard. I want to feed ME, not the 4 legged critters.

Before long we had seeds planted, the fence up and figured out how to keep the door closed. Next stop - head to the store to pick up the plants that we wanted for stuff that we didn't have time to start from seed. Stops at 3 greenhouses (one just to check out some of the flowers) and Darrin and I were ready to plant! Darrin was really getting into the planting (he didn't get to do any of the seed planting since he was running around with the neighbor kids when I was putting those in earlier.

By the time we were finished we had banana peppers, red peppers, tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, zucchini, lettuce and beans. In a week or so I am going to plant some more lettuce, beans and carrots - that way I don't have everything ready to eat at the same time!

For more garden photo's you can check out flickr we will continue to add more photo's there of the garden and it's progress.

Final Day of Construction.... tomorrow we plant!

The final day of construction is here!

Once the boxes are built and in place, it will be time to blend together the "magic mix" that was recommended in the "Square foot Gardening" book. No dirt involved. The boxes are filled with a blend that consists of equal parts compost, peat moss and vermiculite. No fertilization needed. The vermiculite was pretty hard to find. On Tuesday afternoon, we started making calls to find it. Most places that carried it, were either out of stock or only had small bags, of which we would have had to by way too many, making it really expensive! Finally, when we called Green Bay nursery, they said they did not have any in, but they could order it and it would be here before the weekend.

So that was the first part of the project for tonight was heading to pick up the vermiculite and check out what else they had at GB Nursery. Aside from the vermiculite, the only thing that we needed was a few more bags of compost. It was recommended that you do not buy all of the same type of compost... but at least 4-5 different kinds. So we pound a few more bags here! Shopping complete!

A quick drilling of the drainage holes in the bottom when we got home, we were ready to go. Time to figure out exactly where we were going to put everything. Better decide that before we fill all the boxes!

We figured that Darrin would have been all over helping us combine the mix for the garden, but not tonight. Oh well, more fun for us! LOL

We quickly decided that there was no way that our tarp was big enough to mix everything all at one. So we opted to do half at a time. This was the easiest way to divide it up as we had even numbers of bags to work with.

What a mess! It became evident why they recommended spraying a light mist of water over the mix once you have everything poured onto the tarp - it is very dusty!

With everything mixed together, it was time to fill the boxes. Funny thing, even though we checked and double checked out math to figure out how much of everything we would need for the mix we ended up with A LOT of extra. Granted, we knew that we were going to have a little leftover, but we only needed about 2/3 of what we mixed! Works for me - now I have some of the mix that I can up in my potted plants!!!

Garden Project Day 3 - Construction nearly completed!

With the work that was completed in the last few days, Darrin took a few minutes to sit down with the "plans" to figure out what we needed to do next.

Today's mission, get the rest of the boxes completed so that we can play tomorrow! It could be a long night!

Actually, not too bad though. Since everything was cut and all holes were drilled it was just a matter of putting everything together. It was fast work to get the boxes put together and the bottoms put on.

We did make a few modifications to the original plans as we worked through the project. We were not going to put bottoms on the boxes. However, in the end, all of the boxes were getting bottoms - just in case we decide that we need to move the garden or something goofy like that!

One of the final steps in the building process was to get the grid bars put on. Each box will be divided into 1x1 squares for planting. So that means in each large box, there will be 8 boxes for planting in and the small one will have 4. The biggest challenge in this step was to actually get the grids attached to the boxes so that they were even. Can't have one square bigger than another! LOL

Once the grids were in place, the final step is to drill drainage holes in the bottoms of the boxes and we are done! We will get those in first thing tomorrow and my garden will be ready to put into place and plant!

Garden Creation, Day 2

After dinner, the guys headed out to the garage to start on the garden boxes.

Tonight's mission - get the boards for the boxes

Mom can't help with her own Birthday Present". Now of course, that was never said, I was just getting other stuff done in the house. But tonight I didn't have to do anything. They had everything under control. All the boards were cut to the appropriate length, double and triple checking the numbers of course.

Darrin helped with the measuring, marking and sawing of most of the smaller boards and then John tackled the 2x6's with the "big saw" as Darrin called it.

After all the sawing and banging I heard, of course I was curious. They were on a mission! I guess my job for the night was taking the pictures. Apparently Darrin told John "oh yeah - mom can't help make her own birthday present!" But of course no one ever said that LOL

Once the boards were all cut and final counts were done, it was to move to the next step. Darrin wanted to help here, but John got to do all the drilling.

Once everything was cut a prepped, they decided that they needed to at least put one of the boxes together to make sure they were going to be what I wanted. So the small 2x2 box was the lucky on.

Looks good to me! Phase 2 begins tomorrow

Dear Menards, Can I please have 2+ hours of my life back?!

On Thursday, as we were getting in the car to head up north, John told me that part of my Birthday present was on the seat of the car. Now keep in mind that my birthday is still about 3 weeks away. So of course I was curious...

It was the newest edition of the "Square Foot Gardening" book. I have been talking about wanting to plant a garden for a few years but with all the deer around here all the time, we were hesitant. The neighbors tried a few years back (before I moved into the neighborhood) to have a garden, but gave up because they just ended up feeding the deer, rabbits, squirrels and whatever other 4 legged plant eating varmints that happened to be within smelling distance of the house. And this was all with a fence around it!!

After seeing the success that my uncle has had with his garden over the last year, keeping in mind that he had a deer feeder not even 30 yards from his fenced in garden, I wanted to try. John remembered his mom watching this guy's show on TV as he was growing up about Square Foot Gardening... and come to find out, he had a new book out!

So for my birthday this year, I was getting a garden! We spent the weekend going through the book, reading up on the "directions" for a proper square foot garden... grow everything in 1/3 the space of a traditional "row" garden. Sounds good to me! I figured out who big I wanted my garden, leaving the option to "grow" in the future if the need or desire arises. An 8x8 ft garden sounded like it would give us what we wanted in the space we wanted to use.

Tonight we spent 2+ hours at Menards and Steins picking up part of what we needed. I am convinced that Menards has some weird force-field or something that automatically takes away 2+ hours of your life just by walking in the door. We were at Menards from 3:45 until just after 6pm! I know that we left Menards to go to Steins for a bit (basically right across the street), but we were only there long enough to find out that they didn't have much of what we needed for the "magic" mix that we needed for the garden. (apparently only a few places in town carry Vermiculite, and everyone was out of stock so we had to order it) So we went to Menards to but most of what we needed. It was not until I got back into my car that I realized it was after 6pm! Granted there was the time spent looking for my lost keys at Menards, but that's a whole different story!

There was still a few more "ingredients" that we would need, but we at least had everything we needed to build the boxes. We called Darrin on the way home and told asked him to throw a frozen pizza in the oven since neither of us felt like making dinner!

Starting on the construction part tonight was a thought, but that was as far as it got! Guess we start tomorrow instead!

Too much to try and catch up on everything...

so I'm not even going to try! It's been a crazy, busy few months. Between work, Boys Scouts and everything else, it is amazing that I can still (mostly) sane!

Today was the 10th annual Cellcom Marathon. With record registration, we knew it was going to be an awesome day! With over 10,000 people registered in one of the 3 events, there were people everywhere! This year they did something a little different and started the 5k race at 7am and then the Full and Half Marathons at 7:30. They were trying to cut down on the congestion at the start of the race. So Darrin and I had to be there a little early... but wanted to get there early enough so that we could actually find a parking spot semi- close so that we would not have to walk a mile to get to the start of our 5k.

It was a cold morning (38 when we left the house) so we opted for nylon pants and t-shirts instead of shorts. I am sure that if we would have gone with the shorts, we would have been fine once we got moving, but I didn't want to take the change with the wind - that was REALLY cold!

We left the house at 6:10 and arrived at Lambeau Field by 6:20. After getting a lucky parking spot right by the greenhouse in KMart's parking lot, we headed across the street to the stadium. After making a loop through the atrium and seeing the mile long line for the restroom, which I was not in the mood to stand in forever, I was on a mission. Back out of the stadium to find the restrooms.

After a quick wait in line, it was time to head to the starting corral for the start of the 5k. They were already lining up the faster pace runners (definitely NOT us!). We were completely content to stick toward the back of the pack... let the congestion head out in front of us!

Formality's completed (race statistics, thank you's to all the marathon volunteers, national anthem) we were off! When you are moving with such a large group of people, it is really hard to NOT let yourself get caught up in the hype and just go at their pace. Darrin did head out ahead of me, and I just let him go. He has been training at school for the Bellin run, so I know he has an idea of what his pace should be. Shortly after we rounded the corner heading away from the stadium, I did catch up to him. Over the next few blocks were running within a few hundred yards of each other., but once we were about 1/2 mile into the race, he was left behind me in the crowd.

Last year I stayed back with him to push him along. This year I decided that I was going to let him go it on his own. He knew what his time was that he wanted to beat (40 minutes was his ultimate, but he wanted to at least better his time from last year of 44:38) and I wanted to let him accomplish that on his own. We decided that if we were able to keep ourselves to the pace that we wanted, to achieve our personal goals, we should be IN the stadium by the time the Marathon started at 7:30

It started out as a very chilly morning but it was the perfect morning for a run. Once I was finally able to focus and block out everyone else around me, I found myself enjoying the gorgeous morning that it turned out to be. This year I did have the advantage of knowing the course so I could use that to help pace myself. From time to time, I found myself checking behind me to see if I could see Darrin back in the crowd. But he was never there.

Before I knew it, I was less that a block away from the stadium! Not really sure where my running partner was, I made sure that my focus remained on getting to that finish line. With the stadium in view, I found myself thinking about how my pace was... was I going to be able to beat my time from last year (42:48)?? As I rounded the corner, heading into the Lambeau Field parking lot, I saw that the marathon had started... and I was not in the stadium yet...


but I was not going to let that discourage me. I still could beat last year's time.

I kept pushing on.

Running through the tunnel and out on the the field in the stadium this year was just as exhilarating as last year. Granted, last year was the first time that I was actually IN the stadium but this year I was actually able to really take a look around and see some of the details that I missed last year. It still amazes me on how big it is once you get into the field. As you are running around the perimeter of the field, you can't help but feel like a mouse in a vast space!

As I was leaving the field and running through the tunnel, I found Darrin! He came around the corner and as soon as he saw me, he had a HUGE smile on his face. I could tell right away that he was very proud of what he was accomplishing on his own. He was determined to reach his goal. and this gave me motivation so see is I could do the same.

As I was heading out of the tunnel, I saw a clock up on the wall that said 7:38am. If I wanted to bean my time from last year, I was going to have to put it in gear. My ultimate goal for today was to not only beat my time from last year, but to do it in less that 40 minutes. I know that the time on the clock only gave me 2 minutes to finish, but I also know that I the time that I actually crossed the start line was later than 7am. But I was going to see where I could get!

As soon as I left the stadium, heading out through the loading dock, I kicked in the final push. I found myself passing anyone I could reach. When I can around the final turn, and the time clock at the finish line came in to sight, all I could see what 39:xx. I never really saw what came after the 39. All I knew was that I wanted to cross that finish line before it hit 40.

And that is exactly what I did!

Granted, bu the time I got past the finish line, I was exhausted. I pushed myself and my body pushed back, but I did not let it get the best of me!

Once I crossed the finish line, caught my breath and found some water, it was time to see if I could find Darrin crossing the finish line. I grabbed a spot along the gates as waited (still trying to catch my breath!). Before too long, I spotted him! Still wearing that same grin from earlier.

He did it on his own this year! No matter what his time, I am very proud of my little man for what he did this morning!

Instead of hitting the food tents for brats and rootbeer (I sorry, can't do brats before 8am!) we decided to head for the results tent to find out our official time.

The results....

Darrin 43:4. Not only did he beat his time from last year, but he did it by nearly 2 minutes!
Myself 38:42 - about 3 minutes off last years time!

After a job well done.... we celebrated by going out for breakfast! (and then went grocery shopping!)

Next month.... the Bellin 10k...

1st year for me, 2nd for Darrin. We WILL beat his time from last year!