Achey Breaky Back!

I had to move my garden this year. The place in my yard that I had been using for the past 9 years is now completely shaded in by trees, so last year after attempting to plant my veggies where I had been able to before I had to dig them up and move them in an attempt to get something out of my money. This year I knew that the garden would have to be moved, but I learned from moving the garden last year that the best spot for the garden is one that gets a lot of wind and I had to do something to protect the veggies. I also had 3 mini-pallets that I had made a bridge for our Girl Scout troop out of sitting in my garage just providing a nice home for the spiders since our Girl Scout troop disbanded. So I decided to recycle the wood from the pallets to make a box to enclose the containers that I'm gardening in this year. First I had to get the pallets apart. Let me just say that while it may appear that pallets are put together cheaply they aren't! Those buggers are not going to give up and fall apart. All the nails were counter sunk into the wood. That meant I had to get up under the wood slats to pry up the nails. Luckily DH had a very nice pry bar that I could use for this task. Once I got the hang of using it, I was able to get the pallets apart. Unfortunately that meant that I had to put the pallets on the ground and bend over them to get the best angle on lifting the nails. After I reduced the pallets to stacks of wood, some that still needed the nails removed from...I moved my project from the front yard (because the pallets were stored in the garage and I didn't want rogue nails ending up in our tires) to the back yard...the final resting place for the box I was building. Back here I could use the retaining wall to lift the project up a few feet so that I wasn't bending over quite so much. Building the box wasn't quite as much work as getting the wood for it...the hardest part was finding straight nails (recycled from the pallets) and convincing them to go into the box straight. It went rather quickly and I was able to start planting! Next up, mixing dirt! I grabbed my trusty folding wagon to haul the dirt back to our old garden, because that's where our compost heap is and I wanted to put some of our compost into my dirt mixture. DH asked that I use up all the old potting soil he had brought from his mom's house so that it was out of the garage. I then added some soil that I had purchased from the store. Since I had so much bagged dirt, I decided to avoid using any of our good old Colorado clay in my mix. I think that my mixture should make the plants very happy out there. I might have to add to it as it was very fluffy and should sink some with water. I filled my containers and loaded them into the wagon to move them to the new garden spot...in the box. Oh it started raining while I was mixing up the dirt...the plants will be happy. Now it was time to transplant the seedlings into their new home. Since the soil was pretty fluffy, that went quickly...good thing as the rain was now coming down quite a bit. I got all the seedlings into their new home before the lightening. I also got the yard all cleaned up before DH could come home and complain about it. Tossed myself into the shower and put on my jammies. Of course DH reminded me that we were supposed to go to Church...so I had to change. But at least I didn't have to make dinner after all my hard work! My next project will be to get seeds planted quickly (today) for beans, squash and lettuce. Since they grow so quickly I didn't bother starting them early. Hopefully we have veggies all about the same time, but it will be okay if I have to wait. Now to figure out what all I plan to do with these veggies. DH is worried about the onions as he hates them. I plan to make veggie stock and maybe learn how to dry the onions and make onion powder? I don't know...I may just have a ton of veggie stock. :p