You should know that right now I have four beautiful strawberry plants, and that I’m enjoying fresh strawberries right now.

The plants are from Home Depot.
The strawberries are from the supermarket.

Over Easter my mother-in-law told me that I wouldn’t have strawberries this year.  She is obviously unaware that I am willing to think outside the box to achieve my goals.

Speaking of boxes, this past weekend was our big gardening weekend where we built the raised beds we needed to expand our garden. 

And by “we” I mean J, who built the beds, and the two of us filled them with the dirt I had delivered.  Three yards of it.  Which is a lot of dirt.  It was so much dirt, I swear it was multiplying as we pulled away from the pile with another load in the trailer.  Like the rototillers, but with less rust.  The rototiller worked great, by the way:

At one point, it tilled up a rock the size of a soccer ball, so we added it to the wall.  Way easier than digging it out of the ground by hand!  (Which we would have done, had we known it was there.)  While we were working on the main garden, it tilled up a brick.  Other than a really loud clanging noise, the tiller just kept going.  But if it hadn’t, hey, we have a spare!

There was so much dirt J built me a third raised bed, to be dedicated exclusively to growing herbs.  I was so excited I went out and bought more seeds.  And then started plotting the construction of a cold frame, something I have been intrigued by for years.  Don’t ask me why; it’s not like I can’t get fresh herbs at the store in November.  I suspect it’s because it feels like it’s pulling one over on Mother Nature who sometimes dings the gardens with a killing frost before the end of September and then hits us with warm sunny days for several weeks in October, as if to taunt us.

We were, of course, properly monitored all weekend:

He had no complaints about our work, except that it kept us from scratching his ears as much as he would have liked.