Garden Boxes

I told you a few weeks ago that we were going to be doing some serious landscaping projects this spring/summer so I thought I'd show you a little of what we're doing. Here's our plans:
1. Cover the backyard with soil (we had a retaining wall put in so right now it's just dirt) and seed it.
2. Level out the front yard with soil and seed that.
3. Build garden boxes for veggies and fruit and install on the side of the house.
4. Install fence panels and an arbor in front of the garden. Landscape in front of the fence.
5. Plant blueberry and raspberry bushes elsewhere in the yard.
6. Possibly install the brick edging for the flower bed to run along the front of the house. We may not get to this one this year.

Day 2:
So here is Kyle working on the huge dirt pile that we had delivered. The farm where we bought it delivered 16 cu. yards (that's a lot) of topsoil. Kyle is about 2/3 of the way through the dirt pile in this picture.

The dirt pile is almost gone.

Lyla supervising.

We bought 72 landscaping timbers for our garden boxes. I had to measure each one so we knew where to cut them.

Day 9:
Kyle is trying to level the ground a little prior to installing the boxes. Thank goodness for a pickaxe. We've got quite a bit of rock in our yard so the axe really helped to break it and the soil up.

Falling asleep on the job...

Yep, those are our neon colored sleds on our front sidewalk. (We're definately the eyesore of the neighborhood. Our house was the last house to be built by a few years so their lawns and landscaping are already finished and we're just getting started.) We bought 25 strawberry plants to put in the garden so they are just hanging out in the sleds until we get the boxes done.

We prebuilt the boxes and then moved them to the side yard.

Kyle is working on leveling the boxes since they are on a slope.

Day 12:

The boxes are all in place but far from being finished. Now we have to screw holes in each board and pound conduit into the timbers to keep the boxes from moving. After that we'll fill the boxes with soil and then finally we can plant. But then we have to level out the ground around the boxes, do some regrading, plant seed, put down a pebble pathway, install the fencing and arbor, landscaping in front of the fence and THEN we'll be done. The project is far from being finished but we're hoping to get the boxes done this weekend. I'm not holding my breath but I'm hoping for it. :-)