The Mother's Day Garden Box

I've been dreaming and scheming about building a raised bed to plant a garden in for at least six years now. One thing or another always seemed to derail my plans. Well, this past weekend, I took a break from playing Farmville, and I planted a real garden.

I think it was when my seven-year-old daughter asked me if we could plant the flowers outside that provided the final catalyst to finally launch this project properly. The flowers that she was referring to are the flowers that she brought home from school for me for Mother's Day. Her brother brought some home, too, and she brought some home from her Girl Scout meeting earlier last week, too. So I had three neat little pots of geraniums on the kitchen counter.

And, so on Friday (05/07/2010) after I picked up my children from their day care provider, I dropped them off at the house with their Dad, and I went to my local discount department store to see if they had what I wanted in their garden department. I had drawn up a plan already, so I knew I needed twelve "cinder" blocks and 7 cubic feet of potting soil. The ground around my house is about 95% clay, nothing grows in it. The grass just sort of grows on top of it until it is totally soaked with rain, and then it drowns and moss moves in.

I had a little trouble hauling everything to the checkout stand and loading it in my truck, but I got it done. I was super extra careful to lift with my legs because I have hurt my back so many times. When I got everything home, I was too tired to unload it so I just left it in the truck.

The next day (05/08/2010), my husband caught sight of my supplies in the back of the truck, and he became very grumpy. He hates it when I start projects like this. He was just sure that it was going to look hideous. He really just wanted me to pull the weeds in the front yard, but there is a space in the front yard which is always just weeds, and I wanted to put something there, and this is what I decided to put there. He made me promise to take it out if he didn't like it. As if...

It was very important to me to get this box level because my last project, the sand box, is not level, and I can tell that it is not level, and it grates like nails on a chalk board every time I look at it. The ground slopes just a bit where I decided to plant this box, so there was little digging involved, but really just a little, just enough to disturb a little mole that made a very brief, squeaky appearance. I was really pleasantly surprised with how nicely the blocks went in - one right after another, level, level, level.

The children were supposed to be pulling weeds in the area adjacent to where I was working, but without a dedicated overseer, they slipped away to more interesting activities (running through the sprinkler). My husband was busying himself with the truck, fixing some thing or another. He took a break to check on my progress. He was very grumpy. "This side is further away," he complained. I had no idea what he meant by that. I was too tired. I explained that it wasn't finished and that it was going to have a back. "Nevermind, it's none of my business," he said, and he returned to his project.

I finished laying the blocks and back filled them a bit. I used a rake to smooth out the bark chips all around the box. Adding the bark chips that the box had displaced to the area in front of the box really evened out the slope quite nicely I thought.

I dug out the center a bit more, and started filling the wheelbarrow with the clay I had removed from the site. In all, it only filled the wheelbarrow once, but I think it was too heavy to have tried to move it all in one trip because when I tried to move the wheelbarrow, I twisted the tire right off its rim. It wasn't damaged exactly, but it was flat, so I emptied the wheelbarrow and took it back to the garage.

We have an air compressor for inflating tires, but this tire was tricky because it had no tube inside the tire. Why tires are designed this way? The tire had to make contact with every point all around the rim in order to create a seal that would hold the air. It required several attempts, but I was finally able to create a seal all the way around by wrapping a bungee cord around the circumference of the tire.

I moved the clay in three trips and dumped in the back yard where we have a bit of a low spot left over from my first attempt to build a sandbox. (There were two attempts at that sand box.) Then I filled the garden box with potting soil. I stepped back to admire my work, and I couldn't believe it. IT WAS CROOKED! I had been so careful to make sure the box was level, but I totally forgot to make sure that it was SQUARE! When my husband complained that one side was farther away, he meant that the right side of the box was farther away from the fence than the left side of the box. I was SO ANGRY! I stormed into the house, slammed the door as hard as I could, and kicked him in the shin.

Not really. I didn't really kick him. I did slam the door really hard, and I really wanted to kick him. It didn't matter that it wasn't his fault. I become irrational when I'm angry. He was still really very grumpy. We had started with three five-gallon buckets that we were going to fill with weeds that we pulled from the flower beds, if we combined our efforts, we probably only filled one bucket. He really wanted those weeds pulled for some reason. I don't really get it. The weeds are just little vine-y things with flowers on them that crawl around under the bushes. Who cares?

That night (05/08/2010), I slept uneasily, worrying all night about the prospect of taking that box apart and rebuilding it, so that I could make it square. I knew that I was too tired to attempt such a thing, but I also knew that if I didn't, then I would hate that box every time I looked at it - just like the sandbox.

The next morning (05/09/2010) was Mother's Day. My husband shooed our children out of our bedroom, so that I could sleep late which was awfully nice of him. When I got up, the children proudly showed me that they had cleaned their rooms. They had done a good job, too. I felt much better. A good night's sleep does wonders for one's outlook. I decided that I would not take the box apart. I decided that I would fill it with flowers, and it would be so beautiful that no one would notice that it was crooked.

I built some dividers for the box from some scrap wood that we had handy, and I took my seven-year-old daughter with me to the store to buy some flower and some herbs. We decided that we needed 24 flowers and ten herbs. We had great fun picking them out. My daughter's favorite was a pink daisy. I talked her into a dahlia even though it didn't look like anything because I think it might be beautiful when it grows up. She picked out a few pansies in different colors and some begonias and a strawberry. I picked out some hens and chicks because my mother used to plant those. For the herb garden we got peppermint, basil, chives, rosemary, purple sage, and some other stuff.

We got home, and we arranged them and planted them. This was by far the most fun - digging in the dirt with my little girl. I told my daughter stories about gardening with my mother. My mother's garden was larger than my whole front yard! It was a vegetable garden, but I remember my mother pouring over seed catalogues and ordering saplings and planting a little orchard when I was young, too.

I was dead tired at the end of the weekend. It didn't seem fair that I had to go to work the next day (05/10/2010). That night the flowers got a little rain, and I took a picture in the morning - hopefully the first of many.

Decorating my son's nursery

Welcome! This page is dedicated to telling the story of how I decorated my son's nursery. My son is due to be born on March 21, 2005.

Choosing a theme: My husband and I painted murals on the walls of his sister's room two years ago before she was born. For her, we choose a Winnie-the-Pooh theme. We picked out some images from a book we had. Unfortunately, the pictures in the book were water colors, and her walls were textured. I wouldn't say they were highly textured, but they were textured enough to make the kind of detail in a water color image impossible to reproduce. This time I knew I had to choose images with a resolution similar to a coloring book. At first I wanted to do an under-the-water theme with images of the Great Barrier Reef as seen in the hit movie Finding Nemo because Fisher-Price has some really cute aquarium-themed toys and accessories, but my husband has a collection of Chevron Cars and no other place to store them and display them other than Jason's room, so we decided to decorate the whole room around these collectible toys.

Here are two examples of the Chevron Cars in my husband's collection. He has dozens more. These two happen to be named Frankie 4-Wheeler and Freddy 4-Wheeler. Frankie 4-Wheeler and Freddy 4-Wheeler come in packages that look like this. When you put them next to each other, the images actually line up. This image of a mountain road is the mural I plan to paint in Jason's room. When it is finished, it will wrap around three walls.

02/16/2005: The first thing I did was to create a photocopy of the images show above. I blew up the image about 200%, and then I drew a one-inch grid over the image. I measured the walls and choose a scale of 1:10, and I drew a 10-inch grid on the wall. Then, I began sketching out the image using the grid to keep everything in scale.

02/18/2005: Here you can see the four basic colors of the mural: blue sky and water, green grass, purple mountains and brown roads. I will add dark green trees, white snow, yellow sun and gray stones before I am finished.

Mistake Number One: buying paint. The entire civilized world probably already knows this, but just in case you can learn from my mistakes, here's the first one I made. When I walked in Lowes Home Improvement store, I went straight to the paint section and I started trying to match the colors on my package with the samples displayed on the wall. The colors I was looking at were all beautiful, designer colors, and there was sign clearly indicating that these colors were exclusively mixed in the American Tradition Signature paint. Well, I was actually looking for American Tradition. That's the paint we used two years ago for Samantha's room, but the Signature paint was $26 per gallon while the regular American Tradition was $10 per gallon. How could I get them to mix colors in the regular American Tradition paint? Well, I was looking at about four different palettes and they all said the same thing about being mixed exclusively in the Signature paint, and it was late, and I needed to find these colors. I didn't want to be at this all night, so I just set to work at it, and I finally found four colors that I like very much, and I took them up to the paint guy and he started mixing them for me. While he mixed my paint, I wandered around looking for brushes and things. As soon as I turned around I saw two more displays of color samples! They had been right behind me the whole time! They were much larger displays with lots more colors, it would have been much easier to find colors that I liked, and they would have mixed them in the less expensive paint. Live and learn. I spent $75 on paint hat should have cost me $30, but it's really good paint, and my baby's worth it!

Mistake Number Two: ball point pen. I looked all over the house for a pencil to draw the grid and sketch on the wall, but I couldn't find one. All I could find was a ball point pen, so that's what I used. I should have gone back to the store and bought some pencils because the ink leaked right through my super paint. I went over it several times and that helped, but I will have to try touching up with some sealer-primer to get the ink to disappear entirely.

My Power Wheels Project

I just finished a great weekend project, and I want to tell everyone all about it. Power Wheels are very cool, ride-on toys by Fisher-Price for children ages one to six. Retail prices range from $70.00 to $269.00. The design is so simple and durable that the children often out grown them before the toy wears out; therefore, used models are often handed down to younger children. My daughter received her first Power Wheel from her day care provider. It is the Barbie Beach Cruiser, Model Number 76821. Because Fisher-Price is constatntly updating their toys to keep them fresh, this exact model is no longer available, and it was subject to a recall in October 1998 because a fault in the wiring that occassionally resulted in fires. The most notable fault with this particular toy is the missing grill. Other parts are also missing or broken, but it runs great!

The first image above is a picture of a Barbie Beach Cruiser in excellent condition that was sold on ebay. The second picture is my daughter sitting in her new car before I got started. I wanted to freshen it up, make it look new again, and I'm not terrbily fond of pink. I rembered seeing a car painted like the American flag after the attackes on September 11, 2001, and I found this photo by Gay Ayers.

I couldn't work out how to manage the stripes on such a small vehicle, so I just painted all the pink parts red, all the white parts white and then added the starfield. I think the finished result is very patriotic, and I hope my daughter can master its operation before the neighborhood, Independence Day parade!



How did I paint plastic?
This was the most interesting part of the project. I found a product by Krylon called Fusion. It claims to chemically bond with hard to paint surfaces like plastic, and it works great!

One thing I wish I had done differently:
I painted the car in my garage with the door up. I thought this would be sufficiently well ventilated. I did not suffer any ill effects from inhalation, but the accelerant in the cans created a lot of dust. The tiniest particles of spray paint dried before they hit the car, and they floated around in the air until they fell on something. Now there is a lot of red dust all over my garage. The next time I tackle a project like this, I will set it up on the patio in the back yard.

Future plans:
I would like to replace some of the missing parts. According to the parts list at Pickering Appliance, the hoodlatch (#74780-9039) and the battery retainer (#74540-4419) are still available. However, the headlight and guard assembly (#80030-0108), the grill (#74560-9809) and the telephone (#73231-9449) are not available. They also list the rear roll bar (#76821-4219) as unavailable. Since the plastic is broken where this piece fits into the body of the car, I don't need this piece. If you need this piece, please contact me.

If you can give your son or daughter only one gift, let it be enthusiasm. -Bruce Barton

Outings are so much more fun when we can savor them through the children's eyes. -Lawana Blackwell, The Courtship of the Vicar's Daughter, 1998

Always be nice to your children because they are the ones who will choose your rest home. -Phyllis Diller

The soul is healed by being with children. -Fyodor Dostoevsky