Movin' On Up - The High Rise Is Complete

For my birthday last year, the man agreed to let me build three more boxes in the other corner yard. They only got built in June, so I didn't get much use out of them, but I had high hopes for them for this year since the location gets a bit more sun than the main corner yard does. I built the boxes rather quickly and honestly thought that the six inches and eight inches I chose for the depth would be fine even though I knew from my first foray into raised beds from Fall of 2008 that it wouldn't be. Still, I chose to save the money on the wood and build them anyway.

Now I'm adding an addition to them and turning them into a high rise to be the depth they should have been all along.

The man, graciously as always, cut all of the boards for me. In the other corner yard, there's two 3x3 and one 8x4 bed that need additions.

I stacked the boxes.

The screws we had were too long, so I went out and got some two inch lengths and went outside to try my hand at screwing in the connecting blocks, myself. I could do it. Why couldn't I do it without help? It's a drill and screws; it practically works by itself.

I'm shamefully not as cool as I thought I was.

My Bert and Ernie arms couldn't hold the drill, press down on the drill and then hold the block in place while making sure not to shift the box on top. I got one side of one box done, practically stripping the screw bit to do so, and if you lean your head to the side, or have a stiff drink before viewing the picture, it doesn't look too bad. OK, so it looks bad. EG, I saw you cringe.

I gracefully conceded defeat, however the dog who witnessed my crushing failure wouldn't agree that graceful was the right word, but I packed it up and came to ask for help. The man's right. I'm "not qualified."

We went out to tackle the job together and I don't know if I feel better or worse. He struggled almost as much as I did. It turns out I couldn't have bought worse screws if I had tried. They had no bite whatsoever. So it wasn't all my shortcoming, but I was responsible in the long run. So, does that make me more or less qualified?

Here are the finished raised-raised beds. Next weekend looks cold, but sunny for both days, so I'm likely going to get the compost then to try to start filling these babies and top off my other beds as well.

The morning comes early. Sweet gardening dreams.