The story of a girl and her box

Hi everyone. I've been around here on the forum for a couple of weeks now, but I finally have some pictures to show (thanks in great part to your help/advice/wisdom...).

This may sound familiar to many of you, but this story begins once upon a time with researching, searching, planning, buying, searching, researching again, returning, buying, reading, asking, and more (re)searching. Chapter two finds us in the garage while the children either nap or ride bikes on the driveway. Borrowed drill bits and a carpenter's square, the wrong pants for such work, and arm muscles unused to such strenuous drilling/screw-driving are our brave heroine's companions for the afternoon. A box almost finished surprises the herione's hero after work. He is super impressed, and allows Mrs. H(eroine) to complain all she wants to about her tingling arms and wrists that will soon turn into aches.



Mr. H(ero) takes a closer look in the morning, and suggests that some improvements could be made if done a slightly different way before the project is finished. Mrs. H, having thought the same thing, and intending to do it herself later on, decides that two heads are better than one, and one set of muscles that are much stronger and not currently noodly, are better than, well, what she has. So ALL screws are removed, and Mrs. H is glad to hold pieces steady while the much stronger Mr. H tightens and squares and makes the bed match the picture in her head. Yay teamwork!



Chapter 3 sees Mrs. H getting dark circles under her eyes from her forum time, craigslist time, book reading time; and growing a steering wheel out of her hands from the trips back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth as purchases are made and reconsidered, and different purchases are made... At the end of the chapter is where we find ourselves now, with a pile of MM ingredients and a stained bed (just the outside) that Mrs. H finds so intoxicatingly gorgeous that if she weren't so madly in love with Mr. H, she might consider asking out on a date.



Stay tuned for chapter 4: the mixing of the mix.

fantastic! I hear you on the forum/book/craigslist/research time! I've done little else for months! Your box is beautiful btw!!

I hope my wife never see's those kinda boxes!

What a wonderful box.

The girl in this story is pretty lucky that not only did she have the guts to start this project on her own, but when she had concerns about the results, Mr. Hero stepped in and helped her out. That is what Heros are for.

Looking forward to the next chapter of this story.

What great teamwork.
And what a lovely box. Almost too pretty to put outside in the elements.

Wow! What a lovely box and a great story! I can hardly wait for the next instalment!! I will be sure and tune in again to find out what happens. Will Mr H rescue her again from some perilous undertaking? Will she give in to her heart and ask the box out on a date?

Love your writing.

Gwynn

Thanks for your comments everyone. Today is Mixing Day! Bring it on!

Chapter 4 is on hold due to rain. Forecast calls for 3 days of it. Mrs. H will do her best to live through the frustration and disappointment. At least she can do more reading, shopping, returning, researching, posting, (obsessing?) in the meantime...

So, chapter 4 was supposed to be "Mixing the Mix". Well, last week brought torrents of rain to the Hero's. I guess we'll go for an epilogue to chapter 3 then. Rain dampens not only the soil, but the spirits of Mrs. H. Lowes and Home Depot try to provide some retail therapy, but Mrs. H feels as if she is spinning her wheels (especially with all the driving to the aformentioned therapists...). Seeds and seedlings are purchased, and Mrs. H does her very best to overcome her bad track record with house plants, and tends to the sweet baby plants whose care she has been entrusted with.

Read, read, drive, buy, ask, return... more of the same. Mrs. H painstakingly figures out how to build her covered wagon that will double as a frame for deer netting. She also lines the bottom of the garage-dwelling box with hardware cloth for the burrowers she's never met in her yard, but she wants to be prepared in case they decide to drop by for a nibble in the same way the mosquitoes do every time Mrs. H even thinks of going outside. Many scrapes, and seemingly thousands of staples later, the bed is lined and ready for the great out of doors.



Today dawns earlier than the H's, but not by much. (Kids'll do that to you...) Our hero and heroine carry the box back to its new home, only to discover that it's way too slope-y. Didn't look that bad yesterday. Plan B turns out to be only slightly less sloped, but it's all they have left. And the best way the frustrated couple can figure to level the bed is to dig it out, place the bed and level, then fill in the gaps. BUT, there is the pesky problem of the wonderful critter lining. Well, the garden bed now covers the final resting place of many, many staples. Fortunately, cedar is a very soft wood, and the lining just pops off without much effort. And at that point, our courageous (yet slightly grumpy) couple throw in the towel for the day.



So, our Heroes live to complete their project another day. Maybe one day, there will be a chapter 4.

My dear Lord I am riveted!! Such a creative post. Well done.

You get a couple smileys up...

Aww shucks. Thanks.

WOW! That is absolutely gorgeous. I have box envy. I showed it to my husband, and if/when our boxes need replacing, I have him talked into that one! Did you design it yourself, or did you see a picture somewhere? It's beautiful. Are you filling it full of MM or are you not filling it all the way to the top?

tkdtara84 wrote:I have box envy.

SERIOUS BOX ENVY!!!

TC

I read somewhere, probably here, that God made rainy days so gardeners could do their inside chores. Oh the torture of laundry, I think I need a flower bed out back by my clothes line.

Does this story continue?

Girl you are a creative writing genius! I too have box envy...are the pvc's for watering? Do they have holes on the sides?

A very interesting idea! And nice photos!

Wow. Feelin' the love. Thanks for your comments everybody. So, to answer some of your questions: I wish I were clever enough to create the box myself, but I did find the plan (which I modified a bit) here: http://www.lowes.com/cd_Easy+Growing+span+classsearchtermRaisedendecaterm+Garden+endecatermBedsspan_1266865707_

I loved that it has a seat. I decided on the plan, and had it all built before I received my copy of the book (I'd read it from the library before, and was going from memory), and made it 14" high. I'm happy with the height for sitting purposes, but know that it means I will use more MM. I was going to fill the bottom half with sand, but I already had purchased the ingredients, and I'm not driving around creation to return half of it... So it will be filled with 12" of MM, and I'll plant all the root veggies I want! Yesterday was a bit breezy, so we opted to do the mixing another day. Plus, I have to reaffix the liner, and I didn't have the mental capacity for it yesterday. (That's what you see so unceramoniously heaped in the bed.)

The PVC on the sides is just the "homes" for the hoops. They're 1" pipes, and my 1/2" pipes will fit down into them with a 1" to 1/2" adapter. When the hoops are not in use, I will keep the "homes" covered with caps to keep them clean. I painted the 1/2" pipes black so make them blend in a little more, thereby hopefully avoiding the HOA monster.

And finally, I did get some laundry done on that rainy Saturday. But I was pretty grumpy about it. Why has this project tied up my emotions so much?

Just a thought, go ahead and look around the forum for filler ideas, some can be found for free, you just go get them, and save the MM for the box you will want to add next year. Chew on that thought while the weather dries out, I'd hate to see you say next year, "I should have hung on to the MM"....

Definately consider fillers and saving the MM. By late summer, you may be ready another box and a fall/winter garden. This sfg is addictive.

Kay

WOW!

Can you and hubby come make my boxes?! Yours look SOOOOOOOOOOOO much better than mine! LOL

Sounds like you have definitely hit the ground running. By the way, please do keep those stories coming. You are a fantastic writer. I can't wait for part 4! But, +1 on adding some sort of filler. 14 inches of MM can get real expensive real fast. Besides the whole idea of SFG is that you can grow most every thing you want in 6 inches of soil. One thing I'd definitely do is leave part of the box deep for my carrots and such.

I'm following this thread and looking forward to the rest of the story!

At LONG last, chapter 4, "The Mixing of the Mix."

This long-awaited day finds Mrs. H unexpectedly unprepared. The weather for the coming weekend is forecast to take a turn for the worse, so Mrs. H ends up mixing the goods on Friday, right after her much-needed massage, while Mr. H is out of town.



Grumbling about the counter-productive nature of this endeavor, she begins dumping bucket after bucket of poop on a tarp, only to discover one batch of poop has little friends in it.



She names one captured friend Alfonso, until discovering he's no friend. She quickly un-names him, and after discovering about 2 dozen more of his friends, considers renaming him something her momma didn't raise her to say.

She decides to test-drive the mix before discarding it, and her sweet broccoli babies are nominated for the job.




In chapter 5, "The Planting of the Plants", our broccoli heroes put up a good fight, and earn a new home for themselves and many new little friends to come.







And momma's not letting these munchkins sit out there un(over)protected.





The weather ends up not turning as bad as expected, but now Mrs. H knows how to cover those babies. In fact, she now knows a lot of things:

1. She has no problem talking to plants.
   
2. She will stay up unreasonably late to make sure a hastily thrown together tarp cover stands up to wind.
   
3. Dirt under her fingernails doesn't bother her like it used to.
   
4. Her gardening gloves make her feel like a Super Hero, enabling her to touch and even squish heretofore "icky" bugs.
   
5. Frustrations and annoyances along the way get swept away pretty quickly when things start to grow.
   

Ditto, Ditto, Ditto to everything everyone else has said. And I love it, I love it, I love it to your final revelation. This is the stuff "gardeners" are made of.

You are really good at writing!

And I your box. If you don't take it out on a date, I just might.

Keep it coming! I've so enjoyed reading about your adventures in gardening.

+1 on the gloves. I am much, much braver when I have them on.