Slow progress on building the garden's raised beds

One of my favorite phrases is the I Ching's "perseverance furthers." Around here, it's the only thing that does. Almost everything takes much longer to accomplish than I think it should.

Last week, an author I've been working with and I sent a book manuscript to its editor-at-the-publisher (I've been its developmental and line editor, working on a freelance basis). I looked into my files and discovered a document outlining our thoughts for this book that was dated April 2004. Just over five years. Well worth the time and effort. But not an "immediate gratification" sort of project.

Same with the garden's raised beds, on a smaller scale.

Here they are as of May 28:

Yup, nothing there but good intentions.

Here's June 5, a week later:

In between, we got the wood, and got it cut, got screws and nails, drilled holes, and fastened things together.

Here's June 7:

My daughter agreed to dig the sod out from inside the frames. When she finished, she covered the area with old newspapers. Her devoted helpers hung in there while she worked; it took two days' worth of spare time, and she caught up a little on some of the newspaper articles she hadn't had time to read when they first appeared. She's done with all this now. I was inside working on the book that just got sent off.

It's a week later and we still don't have any soil or plants in the beds. They'll get there. The afternoon thunderstorms have coincided with the times we might have had available to work on these next steps, and the hail would have pummeled the plants if we'd had them in the ground, so for the moment all is okay.

Meanwhile, things we planted in previous years in the front yard are rewarding us with carefree blossoms:

Comments

[Linda Cunningham]

The iris looks fabulous. We made a Home Depot run to buy more container soil for The Great Potato Experiment and also walked out with a light salmon pink miniature rose, so we now have a bit of colour other than "green."

[Susan J Tweit]

Ah, for all of that precipitation you've had. All we've gotten is the wind off the edge of the front. So it goes.... Your iris photo reminds me of the clouds of wild iris we sat in the vegas (wet meadows) east of the town of San Luis as we drove home from Santa Fe on Friday. I'll get to that in a blog post when I've gotten caught up from being away....

[Joanne]

Ahh. Everything is just so "one step at a time," isn't it!? I keep thinking that as I pack. Meanwhile, my garden--many hours of labor a few years ago--produces lots of onions, basil, jerusalem artichokes, potatoes, garlic, radishes, collards, etc. without much planting at all. It's just on autopilot. This will be too--in a couple of years!

[Kit]

Slow but steady... one of those too true cliches. I love the fact that she read the newspapers as she lined the boxes. Now that's taking the journey without being so hung up on the making it to the destination!

[Deb Robson]

I'm not sure why my replies to these comments have not been showing up.

We are still working on finding time and appropriate weather to get the soil into the boxes. Right now, the weather's much better.

[fibergal]

What is that lovely cloud of pink blossoms. My yard needs this.

[meg]

It all looks like progress to me! OX