an impromptu home improvement project

so my roommate (not to be confused with the beau) always comes up with these hair-brained ideas and

*i always agree they are actually good ideas.*

on friday, we went to kohl's to find a dress for myself. didn't find anything, and since kohl's is next to lowe's, i asked her if we could run in and look to see if the BBQ grill the beau wants was still on sale. we ran in and somehow, in 5 minutes of looking for the grill, she convinced me that building a planter would be a good idea. and before i knew it, i was on the phone, asking my dad if he had used all the stone from my sister's house (she has a HUGE pile of white rock in her backyard she is getting rid of).

*turns out, there was plenty.*

in our heads, moving rocks -- and these rocks ain't little -- was going to be easy peasy and take like 5 minutes. insert reality and suddenly, we realized we were going to move about 400 pounds of rock from my sister's backyard to the roommate's truck, and into a wheelbarrow and then to the backyard, where we would unload them onto the ground until we could figure out where we were going to put everything. it started off easy enough, until the second minute of moving rock.

*two hours later, we had the rock moved to the backyard*

i was entirely sure i was going to pass out at more than one point. the next few hours were spent moving rock, tilling ground that prolly had no business being tilled, moving more rock and watering. we bought dirt and then bought more dirt. we also got fruit & vegetable mix, as well as coconut coir. did some more watering and i think the big planter will be ready for planting tomorrow.

while building this big planter, our old german neighbor, sue, came outside and talked to us about our garden. she is very knowledgeable about gardening; when we informed her we were growing watermelon in the big planter, she told us that the watermelon would overtake all the other plants and that the watermelon patch should be separate. what did my roommate hear?

*let's build another planter . . . which we did.*

there was a lot of wheelbarrowing and hauling and digging and weeding . . . but i am so proud of what we accomplished in two days. we will plant tomorrow and see how it goes. we are both new at this, so i hope our first attempt at gardening is successful. below are some pictures of our project thus far!