Garden completed, June 19, 2009

Built fence around the garden and planted it today. The fence is 4 feet high. I am told deer will jump an 8 foot fence. I hope the deer don't find me this year. I drove in 8 foot posts 2 feet into the ground, so I can add more fencing on top. I also installed the egress window, ladder, grid and cover in the basement today. The bluebirds don't seem to be interested in building a nest in the basement anymore. I hope this lasts until I get the basement doors installed. The doors should arrive in about two weeks.

Creating a garden and working with Bluebirds, June 18, 2009

Today I took a shovel and turned over the soil to plant a garden. This is ground that has never been tilled. It was a lot of work. luckily, I knew a friend with a rototiller. It still took about three hours to complete. The garden is 20 ft by 20 ft. I will get fencing material tomorrow and put it up before I plant. There are deer and antelope, as well as a herd of cows who would probably eat everything I planted in one sitting. I also had to do some bird work today. A pair of bluebirds keep trying to build a nest in the basement, so I built four birdhouses and attached them to posts I dug into the ground. I placed three in front of the house, and one by the garden. You can see one on this picture at the left upper corner. The birds were inspecting each of the three houses out front. It looked like they couldn't decide which one they liked the best. I picked up the rest of the material today to attach the sill logs; coupler bolts, threaded rod and the drill bit to drill the holes in the sill logs for the anchor bolts to pass through. I will have the lift delivered to our property on Saturday, so I can build the peeling rack and start putting logs on the wall on Monday. I think next week will also be the week that we get the driveway built, as well as the rest of the dirt leveled around the basement and the garage slab.

Tomorrow, I will plant the tomatoes and peppers my Mom started for me, and move the fifth wheel trailer on top of the garage slab. I will set up a tarp over the front of the trailer for shade and protection from rain.