What not to do.

We dumped all our supplies in the veggie garden, and within minutes, the skies opened up, and rained non stop for almost a week.  Now looking back, I should have thrown on a raincoat and just got out there and worked in the rain.  In fact, every day that passed I mourned that I had no seeds in the ground to benefit from such a long wet spell.

But instead, on the very first day that the sun reappeared, I headed out to begin work.  What I found was a hot muddy mess, and a brand new crop of grass and weeds in my previously cleared area.  That's what is known as One Giant Step Backwards.

I spent the better part of a day digging up weeds and grass.  With the rain clouds gone, it quickly climbed close to a horribly humid 88 degrees.   At some point the husband took pity on me and came out to help.  Bless his heart!

And his "let's get it done" attitude.  Quickly doing the math, he resorted to renting a truck from Home Depot.  Yay - only two trips needed to deliver 150 bags of top soil, garden soil, and cow poop!

However.  The big however.  Unloading 150 bags weighing 40 pounds each became a soul destroying exercise.  What "fresh hell" is this, to quote Jen Hatmaker???

But we shouldered on.  Determined to get all the raised beds built, and filled with soil in one day.  Har har to that crazy dream, I say.

Here's what one of four corners looked like at around 3pm (the earlier part of the day having been spent weeding and heaving wretched bags of dirt):

An important note here is that all this lumber had been sitting in the week long rain, and now became another hellish task to put together.  These are "no tool" veggie beds that are supposed to just slide in place, but there was a lot of pounding and jumping and stomping, and let's just say that the instructions to "make sure each bed is level before filling with soil" was cast out with our last ounce of waning energy.  

  These look fairly level, don't they?  The correct answer is YES!

At about 4:30pm the husband suddenly felt the need to take the kids to the pool.  And I continued on with what I consider to be worse than childbirth.  Breaking open dozens and dozens of f*cking heavy bags of soil, and dumping them into the beds.  

Here's my do-over piece of advice:  Forget raised beds!  Put those veggies in the ground and wish them good luck!!

Here they are, with soil.  Cursed raised beds!

Sadly, only about a third of the beds got built and filled with soil.  So much for getting it all done in one day.  It simply cannot be done.

At about 6pm I crawled into the house for a much needed shower, and curled into a whimpering ball on the sofa.  Farming is not for anyone over the age of 25!  And on a side note, my kids were utterly and completely uninterested and useless during all of this.  If this had been Little House on the Prairie, I would have taken them to town and traded them for a mule.

Meanwhile, in other corners of our property, little notes of joy are popping up in various colors:

Ironically, this is what the hubs made for dinner.  I feel like I'm being taunted.