Innocent enough

A few days ago, our neighbor called us up with an innocent enough question: "I'm getting rid of the old sandbox frame, do you want it for anything? You could turn it into another garden bed..." It's utterly amazing how one little question can instantly turn into a weekend project. "Sure, we'll take it" we replied. Little did we know that this would quickly expand into multiple gardening feats.

We placed the frame in a sunny spot next to our existing vegetable bed. We measured how much dirt we needed to fill it (1.5 cubic yards to be exact) and realized that it would take many many trips to Walmart to get enough from those little soil bags. So we did what any unsuspecting gardener would do and called up the local dirt supply center. They had exactly what we needed and were willing to deliver it. "Great!" we thought, "we would spare our poor Acura the strain of carting a ton of dirt around." (As homeowners, we've discovered that it is unreal the things you can fit into our car: lumber, cement blocks, trellises, loads of mulch, huge plants, fencing, ...) Of course, the only catch was that the minimum delivery size is 3 cubic yards and we only needed half that by our generous calculations. "No worries," Nathan assured me, "I'm sure will find a way to use it all."

The dump truck arrived that afternoon to deliver the soil. Hats off to the driver as he meticulously positioned the dump truck so as not to damage any of our trees. You had to see it to believe it, there was not a lot of elbow room. The dirt started pouring out the back of the truck. It kept coming and coming and coming. Just when I started to think "what have we gotten ourselves into!", the truck lowered and the dirt stopped. I had almost recovered from the scare, when the driver pulled forward and started dumping the rest of the dirt. There was more!

We thanked the driver and stood in awe of the pile. What were we going to do with all this! To save our sanity, we decided to go ahead and fill up the bed. That way we could see exactly how much dirt we were talking about here. We actually ended up using just over half, even after adding in some of your homemade compost. As we were finishing up, Nathan paused thoughfuly. "You know", he suggested, "we could use the rest of the dirt to add a new flower bed under the master bedroom windows..." And just like that, a new project was born.