Raised Bed Garden

My doggy runs around my back yard and has ruined all my grass.   And he jumps at the fence and hangs on it to see my neighbors.  They probably don't appreciate that too much.  So I decided to build a raised bed garden to protect my fence and cover up the dead grass.  I found a good plan on pinterest at  Blueberry Hill Blog.  I built it in about 3-4 hours with my husband helping a bit when I ran out of time.  It was a simple build and I love how it turned out.  It cost me $150 in materials and I used pressure treated wood.  And another $150 for the soil.

I planted strawberries, peas, romaine lettuce, tomatoes, radishes, a squash, watermelons, flowers and two pumpkins.  I think it was a bit too much in there, but I had no where else to plant them.  After just a few weeks my garden has grown a ton.  I've never had a garden before and it is fun to see it grow.

Lettuce

Peas

Marigolds-I always planted these as a child and the smell brings back memories of my childhood.

My first little, baby pumpkin!

Tomatoes

And I have two lemon trees that have baby lemons on them.  It is so fun to see my food grow!!

A Living Garden Fort

Years ago I bought a little grape vine from the fair.  Each year it grows and flourishes and gets bigger.  This year the vines were all over the place and starting to hang down in front. The girls kept trying to make a fort under them, but there was very little room.  My friend, Dan Laffan, gave me the idea of using hog wire to make a tunnel to support the vines.  So I decided to try it!!

Here is our crazy grape vine mess.  Hannah was trying to cut the wire to make a section to use for the fort.  It was hard work!  I cut off a long section of the hog wire and wrapped one end around an old 2x4 board.  After making sure that all the poky ends of the wire were twisted and safe from poking the kids, I was ready to start.

We used a staple gun to staple it to the fence.  I tried going under but the vines were too heavy and big.  My sweet husband thought about putting it over the vines and stapling it to the fence.  I curved the hog wire around the vines and tucked the board in next to the board separating the grass and garden bed. 

Then I carefully pushed up every grape vine I could find up through the wire.  I secured a few of them with twisty ties to keep them in place.

I ended up using three sets of hog wire to get all the vines up off the fence. 

Since the wire is pretty weak, it didn't support the heavy vines well.  I ended up using a fence board on each side to support the weight of the vines.

This turned out to be a very pretty and nice little living fort.  The new grapes are hanging down inside the fort and it is beautiful!  This is a shady spot and will soon be covered in vines and make a hiding spot for my kids.  There is lots of room inside and places to sit on some extra flagstone I had laying around.  

My puppy came over to check out our progress.   Isn't he the cutest!

Bekah and I had a fun time sitting in the fort and talking.  I was able to capture beautiful photos of my dear, sweet girl.

She caught one of me too!

Toby likes this spot too!

Hannah came in for a bit but wasn't in a good photo taking mood.  They aren't always you know.

This took about 3-4 hours to make and was pretty easy to do.  I'm really glad that I created this and my kids can have a living fort to play in.  I had fort in my back yard  that was similar to this.  The many hours playing in it brings me many good memories.