All in a Day's Work

Ta-da! The new raised bed, built yesterday. It doesn't have soil in it yet; we're hoping to get that delivered since we need a cubic yard. Those white tubes are for inserting PVC poles on which to drape bird netting.My husband built it mostly, but I helped and of course, procured the materials and provided advice. It was nice spending time in our backyard together on a Saturday. Usually we are completely taken up on Saturdays with soccer games and music lessons and other errands. But Older Boy is away for the weekend so things were calmer.

We talked about how we used to spend more time in our backyard, when our boys were smaller and could actually run around in it and throw balls and sit in the wading pool on hot days, and we had to supervise them every moment. Now they are too big for the yard--everything they want to do requires a soccer-field-sized space--and anyway we don't have to be out there with them. Also when we lived away from our house for a couple of years, and then during our remodel, our garden deteriorated. We do have bigger plans to bring it back to life, but they are moving slowly. The raised bed is giving us something to dream about and a reason to pore over the seed catalogs again. And a reason to hang out together in our backyard.

There are two hummingbirds who love our Cape Honeysuckle right now, and they drop by at least once a day. They came by to check out what we were doing, as did the Scrub Jay who regards our backyard as HIS yard. And one Red Admiral visited, too. We heard the rooster who lives next door and watched the constant trickle of pigeons flying overhead. They fly over our house all the time but never stop in our backyard. We also heard all the city sounds: the trucks in the supermarket on the other side of our fence, people in the parking lot talking, car radios, traffic on the busy street a block away. It's not a quiet garden but it feels like an oasis to me.

After the construction was done, we had a cocktail on the deck. Our retired neighbor who finds any excuse he can to chat with us over the fence called us "two lovebirds." I liked that.