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.

Redneck Waterbed Failure

I so love coming up with fun things to do with my sweet girls.  It is so fun to pull out a new activity and see thier little eyes brighten up.

I saw a post on Play at Home Mom that I wanted to do so badly.  It was called a Redneck Waterbed and it looked super fun.  I wanted to do it the moment that I saw this.

This week I finally bought a tarp, purple duck tape (because how cool is that!) and got ready for some fun.  The instuctions were easy to follow and pretty simple.  Take one tarp (I bought a 10x25 foot tarp), fold it in half, tape the three open sides and fill with water.  Simple enough, right?

They forgot to mention a really, really important thing.  If your backyard is not flat then this WON'T work.  I thought my yard was pretty flat.  Kinda sorta flat.  Except for the big mound that looks like it should have a RIP sign on it.  Seriously!  And except for the way that the ground almost all the way down the yard has a big gorge in it.  I think a huge rainstorm came in when the ground was dirt and the water made a mudslide, taking out part of the yard.  Then they just laughed, threw down some grass seed and walked away.  So except for all that. . . my yard is flat.  NOT!

I talked my awesome hubby into helping me tape it all up and fill it for the girls.  We followed all the steps and waited patiently while it was filling.  However, the water only filled up in the left 1/3 of the tarp.  I was getting a little worried that this wouldn't work. . . but I still had hope.  Then the whole thing rolled like a huge water filled ameoba into our ditch.  It was a sad and crazy awesome sight.

I went inside to work on my chicken pot pie so we could eat dinner.  When I came outside, I found Chris dragging the water filled tarp across the yard to put it in a "flat" spot.  Had to laugh so hard since it looked like a really weird robe.  He put it down and it immediately rolled into the ditch at the end of the yard again.  We left it and let the girls play.  They had such fun!

So instead of seeing a really cool pictures of a great Redneck Water Bed, here are the pictures of what a Waterbed failure looks like.  It was a fun failure and one my girls are so happy that I tried, but it didn't really work the way it should have.

Bekah loves this.  Can you tell?

It does really make a nice waterbed.

The girls had such fun running and jumping onto the waterbed.  They did damage the tarp but loved getting soaking wet as all the water drained out.

The next day Chris fixed all the holes and put it half on the sidewalk and half on the "flat" part of the yard.  We found out we really, really, really don't have a flat part of the yard.  We could tell it was going to roll into the ditch again.  So the girls and I sat in chairs on the edge of the tarp until it was fullish.  When we stopped filling it, one side had a centimeter of water and one had 5 plus inces of water.  It stayed in one place while we sat in the chairs.  The tarp ripped and water slowly made the waterbed into a slip in slide.  Since we (ok I) wanted the girls to have fun slipping and sliding, I poured dish soap all over the tarp.  This was against my wise husbands advice.  He told me the grass would die.  I didn't believe him.  What a fool I am.  Half of the grass in my yard is now dead.  Very, very dead.  Again, I am a fool.  Ladies, listen to your husbands even if you don't think they are right.  Then your grass won't die like mine.  Anyway, the moment we got up and the girls jumped on it, it rolled right into the ditch again.  I love the pictures I got and the fun memories we made.  Now, to find a flat yard to do this in. . . 

I love this faces of Bekah while she slid down the tarp in the bubbles and water again and again.

The look on my little girl's face right now is totally worth all my dead grass and a ruined tarp.  Do it, even if you have a RIP mound and ditch in your yard.  You will have fun!