It did not take long to decide that one of our first "Covid" projects would be a raised garden bed. I really wanted to plant vegetables and doing so in a raised garden bed offered a lot of benefits.

A raised garden bed can offer some protection from pests (I see you, bunny rabbit), allows you to control the soil you add (thanks, Jones Topsoil and worm friends), allows stronger root growth (especially for root veggies, obviously, like carrots and potatoes), offers safety from kid and pet traffic in the yard, extends your growing season by keeping your plants warmer in the Spring and Fall, and they are easier to manage (logistically there is less bending over and its physically harder for weeds to creep in), and I think they look nice, too.

So I headed to Home Depot to pick up 12 1in x 4in x 8ft, 3 1in x 4in x 12ft, and 1 4in x 4in x 12ft cedar boards and a roll of wire mesh. I had a box of 2.5 in exterior/deck screws and a staple gun on hand, as well as a boxed miter saw that had been begging to be set up ever since my Dad had given it to me for my previous birthday. Please note that I started this project before the price of wood skyrocketed, and at that point cedar felt like a no brainer. It generally lasts longer since it is more rot resistant than other options, and its slightly acidic nature means it has some anti-insect qualities, too. Plus our fence was cedar so I felt it would better match in our yard. This choice would be slightly painful later in the season, but I maintain it was still the right call.

Sometimes simple is best and as my first ever wood working project, there was no question I needed to stick to as simple as possible. I decided to make the garden bed 4 feet by 8 feet. This size allows for easy access to everything planted, as well as minimizing the need to cut boards. 4 of the 1in x 4in x 8 ft boards would make the length of each side, while the last 4 boards of that size were all cut in half to make the width ends. Straight no non-sense cuts for the miter saw with my Dad's wisdom, "measure twice, cut once" ringing in my ears.

Next I cut 4 brace pieces from the 4in x 4in, and began my assembly. An extra set of hands came in handy a few times to hold boards aligned properly while I used my drill to secure the deck screws (thanks, R!). I made 4 identical individual rectangular boxes and then stacked them on top of each other, securing them to the 4inx4in corner pieces, once they were all lined up how I liked them. An easy way to go astray at this step is to not pay attention to which pieces are on the "outside" of the corners. I had the long sides tuck into the shorter sides, so that you would only see the edge of the 4 foot pieces exposed.

Next, I finally got to enjoy the miter saw with my first 45 degree angle cuts (of the 1in x 4in x 12ft boards) to make an edge that would serve as seating and give the bed a more finished appearance. I used some scrapes to secure extra support for the seating on the inside of the bed, and then it was time to add wire mesh to the bottom of the garden in hopes of discouraging animals from digging up into the garden from below. I secured the wire mesh using my staple gun, and used my own version of Hugelkultur to fill in the bottom of the garden. This allowed me to throw sticks from downed tree branches as well as leaves into the base, partly solving the problem of how to fill up the garden and how to get rid of the yard waste at once.

Finally, we brought dirt to top off the garden, and I decided to add an identical second 4 ft x 8 ft garden bed. By the time I circled back to this project, well into summer, cedar was both hard to come by and extremely expensive, but I think it was worth it in the end. I had a vision for the next season that I thought would look nice and might keep future plants from trying to invade the house like the butternut squash pictured below, but for 2020, I was satisfied enough to call this project complete. 2021 continuation...

My kids like avocados. A lot. My kids eat avocados. A lot. And I once read that you could sprout an avocado tree from seed, so early on in the pandemic lock down, I tried to do just that. A lot.

It's pretty simple, really. An avocado seed has a pointier side and this is the side that should be oriented toward the sky. You'll see roots emerge from the flatter side, so clean off the seed, orient it correctly, use three toothpicks jammed into the sides to hold the seed partially submerged in a container of water, put it somewhere warm where it will get sunshine, and wait.

While the physical process couldn't be easier, for me the waiting was hard. I filled that time, in part, by adding additional participants in my avocado tree experiment. I figured they wouldn't all take, and they didn't, so more was better. My patient husband indulged me with periodic but impassioned requests to get rid of the seedlings-to-be, as well as attempts to not appear aggrieved when I said, "in a few more weeks", for a few more weeks. His tolerance ran out at 20 avocado seeds on the countertop at once. He informed me that I'd hit the household limit. It was a boundary that seemed beyond fair.

After 12 weeks, four out of the twenty seeds sprouted roots, and eventually stems. I repotted all four, but kept only one, as I had promised, and watched my little avocado tree grow for over a year. What I learned is that avocado trees are both fragile and strong. Like many of us, the plant handled change poorly. Repotting always resulted in a droopy tree that looked close to death. And each time when I had just about given up, the tree would straighten up overnight, fully recovered and stronger for the ordeal. It survived being repotted 3 times. It survived me putting it outside one night when we had an unexpected frost. It survived, on another occasion, being abruptly kicked out of the indoors, without gradual acclimation.  It lost all of its leaves and I thought would remain a dead stick, more times than I can count, always surprising me with new growth right when it was about to be composted. Much to R's hesitation, it looked like it would be accompanying us on our move to Tennessee. However, it wasn't to be. It turned out that it was not strong enough for 5 minutes in the yard with my kids and their cousins unattended.

Alas, the journey begins again in Tennessee. Time will tell if any of my new contenders have what it takes to survive this apartment, and hopefully our next move to a new home.  Until then, I'm taking a slower approach to starting new plants, and unsurprisingly finding that, much like our family, avocado trees do better in Nashville.

We were too deep into our self-isolation whole-yard makeover to turn back now. We'd purposefully killed our front yard, dug up a giant trench, built a tiny retaining wall, and jack hammered out our old walkways. Now that we'd locked in "neighbors of the year", the pressure was on to make the mess and the work pay off.

But before we could get to that end of the rainbow, we were going to have to get dirty. Very, very dirty. Five truckloads-of-dirt-dirty. My level of excitement inversely matched that of my 4 year old son. But my dread at the idea of grading all that dirt was short lived, once I learned that for an additional $75 charge, we could order our dirt to be delivered by Slinger Truck. Besides being entertaining, the Slinger truck, plus its helpful and patient operators, dramatically cut down the manual labor needed to even the grading of our yard.

We hadn't escaped all the back breaking work though. Due to the delay of city approval on our wall, our first truck of dirt for the yard arrived before we were certain we'd even be able to keep the retaining wall. I'd be lying if I tried to claim I wasn't frustrated to have that first Slinger truckload of dirt piled in the yard instead of evenly spread, but at least J was thrilled! And it hasn't been a total waste as we had a new raised garden bed I needed to have filled, and they were able to shoot the base layer (of pulverized topsoil) over our hedges. If we'd known it would work, I would have insisted on ordering our garden super-soil by Slinger truck too! Instead, that came later in the day by dump truck, and R and I again got our workouts in!

We had planned to move our rain gutter drainage pipe further away from the house, and closer to the street at this point. This was the second of two exit points we felt were too close to the house, and we were determined to fix it as we'd similarly fixed the first when we moved in. But R and I were not in agreement as to the perfect exit location. As we discussed options, we first realized we were not going to see eye-to-eye on the pipe, and then concluded that both of our plans were terrible compared to the idea of instead using a rain barrel. I researched options and found one I thought would look best against the house, a major concern since it would be seen from the street. On a whim, before checking out online on my rain barrel purchase, I checked our neighborhood Buy/Sell/Trade and was shocked to see the exact rain barrel I wanted posted for free to anyone who would pick it up. I told R I'd be back in ten minutes and darted out the door, returning victorious, rain barrel in hand (in van is more accurate) and ready to cross its installation, and our rain gutter problem, off of our yard makeover list. Next was pull out the ivy. Yuck.

Eventually, when we knew the wall was allowed to stay, we ordered additional dirt and graded the piles that had been waiting. J was disappointed he could no longer play king of the mountain, but R and I were relieved. Now it was time to seed the yard. This is best done in Ohio in May and October, but due to our delay it was nearly July. And it was hot. If we were going to grow baby grass in July, it was going to take a lot of water and vigilance. And luckily, a 65 gallon rain barrel was going to come in handy!

Growing grass had worked! I was delighted, but also not interested in installing a walkway in 90+ degree weather. So, we again attempted to find help and hire a team. Unfortunately, again we had no luck and ultimately this portion of the project was delayed until the following Spring. I was sure that it would all be worth it when it was done and we got to enjoy our newly revamped front yard. In the meantime, I finished what I could, rearranging the beds around our trees, adding landscape lighting (R's request), adding a strip of gravel in front of the wall (because driving through the grass was evidently still so tempting) and planting the largest white hydrangeas (still teeny babies) I could find on the side of our home. One day, I just knew, they'd be stunning!

My husband had taken the news, that there were currently 2,000 worms traveling on their way to our home, incredibly well. I might say that I’d bought some patience with my willingness to indulge his own recent out-there scheme, if I wasn’t fully convinced that his acceptance was completely explained by the fact that he’s a saint. And a stoic. That may have helped, too.

With the hard part behind me, it was time to prep for our new friends. I purchased bins from Home Depot and drilled some air holes toward the top of all 4 sides. I used some screen door mesh I had left over to cover the larger-than-the-worm-sized air holes to prevent too many from escaping. While I thought this might be an unnecessary step (adding the screen, not the holes- worms need to breathe! Don’t skip the air holes!), later it was one I was incredibly glad to have taken.

A few things will cause your worms to attempt a run for it. Those include if your farm becomes too out of balance, too acidic, too wet, too dry, too populated with baby worms (Mama worms, I feel you, sometimes we all want to run away!), and when they’re adjusting to change, such as when you first add them to their new home, or when the barometer changes (for example when a thunderstorm is rolling through). Suffice it to say that I would have been wormless after the first week if I hadn’t added the screen. During that period, every time I removed the lid I found mounds of worms desperately searching for an exit. They calmed down thereafter, and seemed to be as happy as I imagine is possible for a worm.

Worms need “bedding”, the contents of which will also find its way into your newly composted soil. I started with a brick of coconut coir, to which I added water (per instructions with the brick). Once the coconut coir was nice and fluffy I mixed in scraps of cardboard. If you’re like us, you got very used to deliveries pouring in while self-isolating, the accompanying cardboard boxes go to great use in a worm farm. Be aware of dyes in any of the substances you add, since they’re not great for the worms. I always have more than enough cardboard, so I usually don’t use any that has something printed on it (usually in black ink) or parts where there is still sticky residue from sticker labels or tape. I try to keep this rule in mind, too, when adding paper from my shredder. White paper, the most common I shred, has been bleached and too much is not great for the worms either. That being said, I added a few handfuls of shredded paper to the coconut coir and cardboard for the worms to bed in and turn into something useful! I topped it off with a little top soil to give them a little grit, and enough water to make the mixture feel similarly wet as a wrung out sponge.

At this point we made a small hole in the bedding, deposited the worms in the hole, covered them with a bit of water, per the instructions with which they were shipped, and covered them up with some of the bedding. The worms do not like light, and they definitely need a few days to recover from their travels, so we waited one day before adding a little food. We added the scraps much like we added the worms, digging out a small divot, depositing avocado peels (worms love avocado!), apple, and bell pepper scraps, and then covering up the food with bedding. While I’m sure the worms appreciate not having to come to the surface to access the food, this really helps reduce the chances that you develop a pest problem.

I kept an eye on the rate at which the food disappeared to determine how much we should be adding weekly, left the lid off outside on occasion when the worms seemed to be congregating on the escape route (again, they really don’t want to be in the sun- but I only did this if I was sticking close by gardening since we had some pretty brazen birds who would have had a field day otherwise), and sure enough I had some black gold within three months! If the harvest from our garden had anything to do with the nutrient rich worm castings we were regularly adding, that alone would have made our vermicomposting project a success. That it was also a low effort way to reduce our trash creation and it gave us an opportunity to teach and entertain our kids were bonuses that lead me to encourage anyone with interest to give worm farming a try!

R wanted a retaining wall. And I wanted to avoid the pitfalls I'd seen others make constructing their own. Thanks to those first particularly strange few weeks in the Spring of 2020 where the whole world seemed to stop, we were not able to hire a team to make it happen. That's how R and I ended up building our own.

The retaining wall that R envisioned would solve several problems by stopping vehicles from encroaching, unobstructed, deep into our yard. It would protect our playing children from said vehicles by providing a naturally understood safe zone and barrier. And it would eliminate the standing water and resulting bug issues by limiting the opportunity for deep ruts to be made by careless drivers. My additional requirement was that it add to the curb appeal of our home, not diminish it. I wanted it to tie in with what was already present in our neighborhood and yard. The city has constructed a small segment of retaining wall on the corner of our property when they installed sidewalks along the main street, so my hope was to match that as closely as possible.

I called the city and after being passed from one employee to another, was finally connected with someone who had knowledge of the previous work done. He told me he would email any details he could pull up, and shared that the work had been done 12 years beforehand. I waited for the information and held my breathe, hoping that I'd be able to find something similar still on the market. To my delight, after learning they'd used a stone product called, Versa-lok, I quickly found a supplier in our city. Next I called to ask details about the product, and learned that the color options had changed over the previous decade. So I decided to head to their facility to pick up samples to compare with what we had in the neighborhood.

I placed the options on top of the existing wall and compared them while dry and wet to find which I thought would match best overall. I realized then that a good power wash might help make the best match. Man, what a difference that made! The corner looked a tad less like its opposing corners, but would much better match what we were about to install. I measured where we wanted the wall to go and did some basic math using the dimensions of the stones to determine how many blocks I needed, how many top caps I needed, and how much gravel would be required. Proper drainage is important for retaining walls to ensure their structural integrity and to avoid unintended new issues.  I decided to buy enough larger gravel for a 6 inch base layer and enough fine gravel for a 3-4 inch top layer under the wall. I still wasn't prepared for hearing that my order meant 9 tons of rock were being sent to my house.

I was determined at this point to do this whole project myself. R was loaded down with work and I loved the idea of making this happen without bothering him. That plan evaporated after digging about 6 feet of the trench. I tapped out, but quickly knew I'd made the right choice. He made quick work of the task, that at my previous rate felt like would have taken me days to complete. Once we (really, R, but I did a little and a neighbor who stopped over with additional tools did a little, too!) had the trench done, it was time to lay the gravel. The slowest part of this for me was loading up the wheelbarrow to take gravel down the length of the yard. (R helped tremendously with this, as well, as it did not take him nearly as long to load the gravel I needed). At this point we called it a day.

The next day, R came to the rescue again and helped me move the stones, which weighed 77 pounds each, across the yard so that as I placed them there would always be some nearby that I could use. I positioned them by hand, using feel and a level, and while the wall was straight to the eye, a small angle from laying the first stone slightly askew meant that I wasn't happy with the wall about half way down the yard. It wasn't going to make it to my desired end point. I tore it apart and started over, this time with a string tied tightly from my start to end point for reference. Now the slowest part was properly packing down the gravel and making it perfectly level. Another neighbor had saved me from having to make a trip to buy my own tamper, which significantly sped up my progress, but it was frustrating to have to start the process over after my mis-start. I was only making the wall one layer tall, so after completing that layer and being happy with it this time, I lined up the significantly lighter (38 pounds each) cap pieces, and again decided that I'd hit my one day limit for work.

I'd planned to use an adhesive to complete the wall the next morning. It was great luck I hadn't done it before, because that morning we'd received a no-no note from the city. Someone had complained about us doing un-permitted work. No more work could be done. The city was great, and ultimately this led to an improvement to the project, but it killed our schedule and turned what we'd planned on being a 3 day project into one that ultimately took well over a month to complete. We'd arranged for childcare with this project in mind for those three days, so we weren't free to complete it again whenever we wanted without planning ahead, and it did take time to work through with the city itself. This threw off our dirt delivery schedule, which threw off our grass planting schedule, which threw off our walkway schedule, which ate the cat, that ate the rat, that lived in the house... you get the picture. We decided to go ahead with Step 3 while we waited. Watching my husband wield a jack-hammer? Step 3 was my favorite.

Ultimately the city engineer asked that we abandon the wall to the right of our driveway, and that we shorten our main wall and angle it to meet the existing stone from the city install. Angle? Huh. Yeah, I could see that it would solve her problem (the wall being too close to the corner and people not wanting to hit it - to which I wished I could say, "perhaps they should be expected to stay on the road?", but I digress) and it would actually be much more visually appealing. However, laying a straight wall is a significantly easier task than one with an angle and I was (appropriately) nervous. I bought the most serious diamond blade I could find for R's circular saw, and proceeded to demolish it immediately while making zero progress on cutting the 2 stones necessary to make the wall angle back as needed. Yet another saintly neighbor came to my rescue. He happened to own a commercial building company, and offered to bring home a Partner saw and help me with the cuts. It was an offer that I readily accepted. I, essentially, sat back and watched as he cut both pieces, but I was horrified at how difficult it was. Versa-lok stones are no joke. I may make my next house entirely out of them after witnessing their strength first hand. Once the cuts were made, I laid out the remainder of the stones and finally began gluing down the caps.

R and I had no need for the gym that month. Every muscle in my body ached. The city engineer stopped by to inspect the work and make sure it matched what we'd agreed upon. She jokingly offered to hire me for any future installs the city had, and I responded firmly, "I think I'm one-and-done on retaining walls." I was. And I still am. But we did it! On to part 4 of R's master-quarantine-front-yard-make-over plan.

It was a rainy spring day, our second in a row, when I called a friend to commiserate. How were we going to survive another day inside with our little ones? We were a few weeks into Covid self-isolatation and still very little was known about what we were then calling the Coronavirus. We had, however, become very familiar with being cut off from normal life. And on this particular day, I’d run out of ideas to calm everyone’s cabin fever and was ready to plop my kids in front of the TV for a movie marathon.

That’s when my friend told me about the worm farm she’d made with her boys the day before. They’d earlier read a kids’ book about the concept at the library, and when the rain started she’d decided it was a good way to entertain her children and teach them about nature. She mentioned the term “vermicomposting” and explained that the worms they’d collected weren’t the best for that purpose, but they were readily available- squirming across driveways and walkways as we spoke.

As soon as I put down the phone, I got the kids in their rain jackets and boots and off we went. At 1.5 and 4, they didn’t really mind being in the rain, but heading out aimlessly with the surely attitude we’d all been fighting seemed like a recipe for disaster. Now, however, we had a mission. Collect as many worms as we could find. We walked up and down our street and around the corner. The hunt was perfect. There were enough worms that my kids stayed vigilant in their search, but not so plentiful that they got bored or filled our container too fast. We were working as a team, which is always fun, and it was something new and different. New and different had been in short supply recently. We wandered around outdoors for 45 minutes before the rain picked up and I pulled everyone inside. By then, everyone was in a better mood. And if that had been it, it would have been a successful activity.

But that wasn’t it. Once we all dried off, my kids rapidly lost interest in our collection of worms. I was relieved that an outdoor reset left both of them happier, calmer, and ready to play nicely together inside, but that also meant that they quite literally left me holding the bag. Of worms.  

I turned to duckduckgo to find out what I needed to give these worms so they’d survive. Well, that’s what I thought I’d done. What I really did was look up the term, “vermicomposting”, thinking that would help me with the sidewalk surfers we’d picked up. I quickly learned that my friend was right, these wouldn’t be great for vermicomposting. And when people talked about “worm farms” it seemed they usually meant vermicomposting. So, what kind of worms were the right kind? Why was this a thing? Why was this a thing that people had written kids’ books about? That’s basically how I headed down the worm hole. (I know, I know. I had to.)

What I learned was that worm composting results in significantly higher quality soil than conventional composting. If I’d ever had any doubts about the importance of the soil quality in plant growth, they’d been put to rest by our first Covid project- renovating our lawn. I was already working on an organic vegetable garden, and it seemed like vermicomposting would help tremendously with that endeavor. What I read promised a higher crop yield with vermicomposting thanks to soil that would be much higher in healthy micro-organisms, and have better water retention capacity and improved soil structure that is great for root growth. It was also said to produce compost with fewer pathogenic bacteria, and more plant friendly nutrients, like nitrogen and phosphorus.

In additional to producing better soil for our garden, vermicomposting became more appealing as I realized it would make composting in general so much easier. No work required to manually turn our waste to turn it into soil. I had fewer concerns about pests with the set ups I considered than with conventional composting, and it looked like it could be done utilizing considerably less space. In the past, space constraints had precluded my ability to compost, which meant all those nutrient rich food scraps were wasted filling up a landfill instead of being put to good use.

We spent so much more time at home during Covid, the waste I saw going into the trash can had increased significantly as well. I liked the idea of putting it to great use and reducing our trash output. And by composting with worms, that food, paper, and cardboard would turn into usable soil so much faster than if we’d found space for conventional methods (3 months vs. 12 months).

Before the kids’ rain jackets were dry, I’d taken the worms we’d collected back outside, dumped them in our new vegetable garden, and ordered red wrigglers. The hardest part of worm farming that I had left to tackle was telling my husband that we were about to have 2,000 additional mouths to feed.  To be continued…

There is definitely a seasonality to seeding a lawn. Thank goodness for that. It allowed me a few weeks to come to terms with what we were doing. My husband's plan was logical. It made total sense. It scared me more than I was willing to admit.

When we'd purchased our home, we had a list of projects in mind to tackle immediately. At the top of R's list was a complete lawn renovation. There was no arguing that the yard was a mess. There were various types of grass, spread unevenly throughout, littered with an astounding number of unwanted weeds. Unfortunately, all of these plants grew at drastically different rates, exacerbating the eye sore that was our grass. We had sought the assistance of professionals too late in the season our first year in the house and couldn't find help. We had consequently attempted a long list of natural remedies to make the yard more presentable. Once tasked with trying to fix it ourselves, I was determined to avoid using chemicals to remedy the problem. But after 3 summers there had been virtually no improvement.

It had only been two weeks of self-isolation, but it was clear that "two weeks to slow the spread", was not about to end any time soon. We were stir crazy. We were in need of a project. We were home. A lot. Why shouldn't we tackle this once and for all? Well, because as R laid out his plan, all I could think of was the possibility that we purposefully killed off our undesirable yawn, and were then unable to grow anything to replace it. In hindsight, it was silly, but I'd been raised by a physician for whom the Hippocratic Oath guided all. First do no harm. It would be an understatement to say I was worried about this plan.

R explained that it made sense to use this opportunity to tackle a few issues outside at once. We had been unsuccessful in convincing the city that, although most of the neighborhood elementary and middle school students funneled past our house on their walk to and from school and we were the only street without a curb, that we needed a sidewalk. They were equally unconcerned about the trucks and cars that regularly made tracks in our yard, since there was no physical barrier, while kids played outside. We were on our own.

R's plan broke down into the following steps:

1. Kill the existing lawn (and ivy)
2. Build a retaining wall
3. Jack hammer out the existing walkway (Replacing this had been at the top of my list when we bought our home)
4. Bring in dirt, regrade the yard, move the gutter exit,  and build smaller garden beds around the trees
5. Seed and then water the new emerging grass
6. Install a new walkway
7. Kick back and enjoy our golf-course-like lawn

I had concerns about killing the grass. I had concerns about growing new grass. I also had concerns about a retaining wall, as I remembered a wall in a very high end neighborhood near where I grew up that was constantly falling apart from the day it was constructed. 30 some years later, you can still drive by today and see large chunks of it crumbling away, despite ongoing repairs. We decided that step 1 was R's personal project, and that I would investigate step 2 and we'd go from there.

Did I say I'd doubted R would be able to kill all of the randomly growing things in the front yard? Silly of me. He pulled it off with speed and precision, confusing more than a few people walking by as he repeatedly mowed our yellowing grass down to nothing. That left me in charge as we headed toward step 2...