Digging to China

He's happy now - give him an hour

Ok, so, the garden forms are made. Spring is approaching, so perhaps we should actually install these suckers. It's pretty self-explanatory. Again, David did almost all of the hard work. I took these pictures before heading off to my shift at the restaurant.

We rented a tiller, and loosened up the soil. Any by 'we' I mean David.

I eventually learned that it works by burying a hook in the back of the machine to keep it tilling up the surface. Guess how hard this is to do with clay? Very.

Dirt. I love it and hate it

Then he leveled it out, bc our backyard is on a slant towards the house. I now understand this is pretty bad for your foundation. Great.

Leveling. This became a theme

Sexy Leveling

Then is snowed, WTH, and so we had to wait for it to thaw.

We can see the dirt again! Time to put these puppies in the ground. Thus began a several-months long stint where I was digging in the yard weekly, due to several outdoor projects. I was very grumpy for quite some time. I was almost glad when it started getting too hot to do anything outside.

David, hiking up his pants in anticipation

He is feeling very happy and fulfilled with the fruits of his labor. I am feeling like I need a Cape Cod to make it through the rest of the day

Oh, I freaking hate Texas soil. It's 80% clay and 100% impossible for me to dig in. Also, even though the ground was marked where the posts went in, you would be surprised how hard it is to dig 2 feet deep holes that all line up. It never worked. There were 6 posts per bed, which became 24 holes to dig. It might have well been 24,000 for me. I worked the entire time with David, and I dug about 5 of those holes.

Someone needs to hit the gym! (me)

Babe, I am so glad you are such a hard worker. Because I poop out.

Also, David has this annoying habit of doing things well the first time. It is easy to appreciate now, long after the fact as I'm enjoying well-placed, level beds with no weird watering problems.

But at the time, when David broke out the LEVELER it quickly got to the point where I started plotting to fling said leveler into the neighbor's bushes.

''IT'S CLOSE ENOUGH'' - I should make myself a T-shirt

Does this happen to anyone else? I am forever finding/hearing things that make me say "I want to put that on a T-shirt'. Which, of course, I never do and promptly forget. I feel like I could be wealthy on catchy (ok, probably uber-nerdy) t-shirts sold on the internet. I need to make a file or something.


Not gonna lie, I really REALLY hated this part. Anytime I have to dig in the backyard I get surly. It's so....unsatisfying. The work I put in per shovel stroke compared with what actually is removed generally makes me angry. So after I have just about killed myself to dig a big hole for a support only to find out that the hole needs to be moved over 4 inches makes me want to go terrorize the neighbor's dog.


As you can see, they eventually all got in the ground, and I didn't get a divorce or anything.

And then it snowed again. What the heck is going on!? At the time, I hoped this meant we would have a (relatively) mild summer. Bwha ha ha! Cretin.

Center garden not sealed or installed yet

David was so pumped up about the impending end of the project he went ahead and finished building the center butterfly garden bed. I installed that one myself, mainly because the supports on this one were like 5 inches long with a diameter of 2". My kind of digging.

YESSSS. It's all coming together.

So pretty.

How We Did It:

A shit-ton of digging. Use a leveler at your own risk. According to my calculations, it would make a great blunt weapon.