Aerie Planting Bed Day 3

With the first four courses in place this morning went very swiftly. I only had to lengthen the trenches on each side wall to accommodate the eight-foot long timbers that would top off the walls. After using all of the 20 timbers I had purchased, I wasn’t happy with the fact that the side walls were so far below the grade of the lawn so I went and picked up 10 more timbers. Now the western wall is pretty much level with the lawn but the eastern one is still about three inches below grade.

The end of the Eastern Wall:



The end of the Western Wall:


If you look closely at the last picture, you can see that I used shorter pieces on the bottom to cheat a little. They are four and six foot long instead of the full eight foot of the last three rows. It saved some back breaking labor but not much. I’ll still have to dig much of the soil out to sieve it for stones and roots before putting it back into the hole. I’ll be going down about 20-24 inches to provide some loose soil for the roots of the plants we will put in. Over a 16’x8’ area that’s a lot of dirt and rock to be moving.

I ended up with eight rows of timbers in total which was two rows more than I thought I would need. I didn’t measure for square because of the opensided nature of the bed, but the rear corners look to be right angles.



The front will get a row of stones (larger flat ones) to make a definitive boundary between the lawn and garden area. Considering the number of stones I’ve gotten out of the trenches, I should have plenty of those when I get done. Of course, for every stone that comes out of the ground, there is that much less garden soil. I’ll have to find some from somewhere to fill that beast of a hole. Worse comes to worse, I’ve got three piles of topsoil up at the Bolt Hole from when I built the barn.



The 5 pound sledge made driving the 6" spikes pretty easy.

Well, that’s pretty much it for Day 3. I’ll go out later and start shoveling some of that dirt through a ½” mesh screen. Small stones and pebbles will go into the sidewall trenches on the outside side of the timbers as back fill. Some will go into the bottom of the bed to provide fill and drainage much as one would put gravel in the bottom of a flower pot. The larger flat stones will find their way into a wall somewhere. The rest….who knows.

Right now it's up to 84 degrees again and the slight breeze that was blowing at noon has vanished. The thin cloud cover has more holes than Swiss cheese allowing plenty of sunlight to fall on the work area. I'm going to take it easy this afternoon. I think I've earned it.

The soil will be there tomorrow and there's supposed to be a bit more breeze (Gustov? Hannah?) even if the forecast is for 85 degrees. Then things get cooler with some rain after midnight Friday into Saturday. I can get a lot more done tomorrow if I'm rested.

(I kept kicking myself for not doing the last three days' work over the weekend wen the high was only around 70 degrees. As it is, I lost another 5 pounds of water weight yesterday despite the Gatorade and water I was drinking. Yeah, some of it came back after dinner but I was still 3 pounds lighter from yesterday morning to this morning.

Let's see...a gallon of water is approximately 7 pounds. I lost 5 pounds, much of it water. That means I was down about 3 quarts. If I was an internal combustion engine and down three quarts of oil I'd be in big trouble. Come to think of it, I am an internal combustion engine. No wonder I felt like hell at the end of the day yesterday!)