It's not every day a guy offers to build a gal a full-blown garden in his backyard. Sure, it'd gotten to the point where the dogs and I were at his house more often than I was at my own, and clearly we were headed in the direction where eventually I'd be there full time (considering my little cottage barely fit one human and two dogs, let alone more). But I was blown away, thrilled, giddy, and a little freaked out by what started out as "you can plant a few vegetables here if you want," and ended up an amazing vegetable and herb garden complete with arbor, gate, and picket fence.
It was about a year ago at this time that Spring Fever and its close relative Gardening Virus hit me, hard. But I was pretty much living in two places since my guy entered my life and rocked my world a year previous - and I knew a garden at my little cottage would die a neglected death. A garden at his place may fare a little better, but wouldn't get 24/7 attention, either. Conundrum.
After weeks of watching me pine over HGTV and gardening magazines and listening to me fret about how I could possibly have a successful garden in this state of flux, he offered up his yard. I could build a little bed in a sunny spot, if I wanted - he promised to take care of it when I wasn't there. Plus, he has a sprinkler system and this may just be a terrific opportunity for him to geek out over systems, soaker hoses, and timers... it'd work.
So with very little hesitation, I scoped out the sunniest areas of the yard and started thinking about how we could build a 3x6 or so raised bed against the fence. As I tend to do, I obsessed and surfed the Web (Google image search is a wonderful, dangerous thing), and obsessed even more so when he mentioned that we should think of some way to protect the bed with edging or a small fence so my dogs couldn't run through it. And what about leveraging an entire corner instead of just placing it against the fence?
Say, this sunny corner?
With a little more obsessing, mulling, and surfing, a "few vegetables" turned into a sketch of a 12x12 plot complete with picket fence and arbor entrance. Having never built such a thing before, my guy, showing signs of being only slightly overwhelmed, did some mulling and surfing and researching of his own. And then he was ready to transform my lofty design into reality.
Visions of HGTV two-day transformations in mind, we set aside the three-day Memorial Day weekend as an all-work all-garden-building set of days. My guy and his saintly roommate did most of the hard labor.
As a (usually) pretty dang independent chick, I wanted to be in there doing everything along with the guys - digging the two-foot-deep post holes in rock-filled, hard pan soil and sawing lumber ("I can do it too!") - but more often than not, my chivalrous guy insisted on doing the super tough stuff while I looked on with sandwiches and trays of lemonade (and plenty of beer). And I didn't totally mind that. Scary.
My wonderful guy built my garden complete with picket fence to keep the doggies out (except, um, when I invite them in), and a massive, wonderful arbor marking the entrance. Inside are two raised beds - an 11 foot by 3.5 foot bed for vegetables, and a 5 foot by 3.5 foot bed for herbs. There's room for a couple of containers, too - a half wine barrel, and a galvanized tub perfect for peppermint. And I crammed a garden bench in there, too. We mulched around the beds and containers with several bags of eco-friendly hazelnut shells.
We bought two cubic yards of the wonderful Bailey's compost out of Snohomish, Washington (two cubic yards was a HUGE amount, by the way!). And then I planted, and planted, and planted.
It was a crazy, but productive, Memorial Day weekend.
My guy suddenly had a full-blown garden in his bachelor backyard.
But as it turned out, he really didn't need to watch over the garden when I wasn't there, and he wasn't going to be a bachelor much longer. The next morning, he asked me to move in with him. I think he knows I would have said yes, garden or no, but I suspect he felt a little better bringing it up when he'd just done the most romantic (and permanent!) thing anyone has done for me - built me the most amazing suburban backyard garden I've seen. This year, we're getting married. Not under the arbor, mind you - that would have been perfect, no? But we're having our wedding rehearsal under it.
And I - the luckiest girl in the world, I'm pretty sure - am looking forward to many happy veggie, herb, and flower-filled years ahead.
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Hungry for more about gardening? Check out the new GrowCookEat weekly feature over on the wonderful goodLife{eats}.
