Some new friends of mine think we are living the “Green Acres” life….City folks starting over on a farm. Little did they know that growing up my brothers and I helped my Dad build garage cabinets, rewire houses, paint, pour concrete and other items I thought was just work. At the time I didn’t think would come in handy later in life.

Well, we decided to redo the outside landscaping in the back of the house. We had hired someone but that didn’t work out so Joanne and I took the project over in April and are almost done with the back. The last two projects were putting in pavers and building garden boxes. Having never done pavers I asked the local place H&M and they told me to put down 3” of compacted stone, 1” of sand and then the pavers. Not so bad, except then you also have to cut the pavers to fit the lawn, steps, curves, etc. So we borrowed a saw from John and Chris Mason and have had it for a few weeks. That was a lifesaver as I have probably cut 200 pieces.

In the picture you can see the garden boxes. Vaughn helped me with the design and some “what to do and not to do” so we have 3 done. To the left of the stairs we are going to add one more garden box as soon as I get the cover crop planted in the vine rows. We put in 4 yards of “Super Soil” from “Grab n Grow” , a local compost place. As you can see by our first crop it is great soil.