Today in Big Projects

First, the story, because the story always comes first. Skip on down to the pictures if you just want to see the new pretties.Once upon a time I had a perennial bed on the sunny south side of our old, decrepit detached garage.  Even after yearly soil amendments and assorted remediation work, the soil was so dense you could form it into pot shapes and dry it into rock-hard lumps. GOod thing native plantss are resilient and laughed at the soil's attempts to strangle them in hot, dry, solid clay each July.Then we got a new garage, which mean pulling and transplanting all the vegetation so new concrete could be poured and workers could move freely around the site etc.I put in new borders  to raise the beds,  did LOTS more soil amendment, AND decided to experiment with veggie gardening  in the new, fresh beds. (TL;DR summary of that side quest: growing veggies fun, and now I know which plants are easy for me and which...aren't. Hot peppers, plum tomatoes, pickling cucumbers & kohlrabi are my garden friends.)More years, more soil amendment,, less need for vegetable garden space, and the beds started turning into perennial beds again. The border edgings get old and battered and warped, and the design was never a great to begin with. In short, they weren't doing the job, they were ugly to boot, and nothing was where it needed to be.We got new a faux lumber raised-bed system last year but cancer recovery has been a slow, unsteady process for Spouseman, and my body is intolerant of physical labor now that the lifetime warranty on my joints has expired.  We never had enough endurance and energy at the same time to get the new kits set up, so they languished in the garage.<cue dramatic music>Until today!Today we got in a good solid 2+ hours in the yard together, and the new raised-bed borders are in. They're made by a company called Vita, (we got our kits at Costco, but they sell online through a website, and for the price, they are amazing.)  I love the simple design and the incredible no-tools ease of putting them together.ANYway. There's still work to be done, but we stopped before we fell over from exhaustion and made a victory snack picnic to celebrate our accomplishments. Enjoy the photo journey (click to enlarge any given pic)And the next project: tidying up the messy patio borders & retiring the too-big, too-heavy planters in favor of more raised beds. Here's the before shot:We'll fit it in somewhere between conventions & butterfly garden shifts & travel and so forth. Summer. It's all about the growing & the making. Watch this space for updates.Until later!