Here's a picture of me in action!

Gettin' the Dirt

On Thursday we arranged to have the dirt delivered. When we told the professionals the dimensions of our boxes they predicted that we needed 4 cubic yards of dirt, with each one weighing in at about 1 ton. We took their word and around 10 am Thursday morning the truck dumped the seemingly small pile of dirt at TEAM (Jess commented on how she hoped there are enough). Yet, we started chipping away at it one "barrow" full at a time (When you wheelbarrow dirt as much as I have impromptu slang will appear). Filling the first box was a triumph, the second a relief. The plan was that we'd fill the boxes, deplete the dirt, and zoom me off to a lacrosse game with a sore back. That didn't happen. We had about 1 1/2 cubic yards of dirt left, and we couldn't leave it piled there, so we began to frantically spread it along the perimeter of the yard. About three and a half hours after we had started the dirt was finally spread out. The boxes looked really nice, but days later I've been nursing my back and shoulder with Icy-Hot cream.

There's the truck dumping our screened dirt into the TEAM field. Little did we know that the "small" pile of dirt was going to cause us a lot of trouble.

There it is in all its glory. I know it looks small,  but in reality it was very scary.

There I am, shoveling the first bit of dirt into the "barrow".

Day 1: Prepping the Boxes

Here are the two boxes and Jess weeding a little bit before putting the weed killing fabric down

Here are the two boxes after we put the material in. We are thinking of having the kids paint the sides!

There's me staple-gunning the fabric to the side of the boxes. That's Alex, he's been a huge help.

On Tuesday I finally got to see the boxes, assembled and all! It was very exciting seeing the project come to fruition. There is space all around the raised beds so that the kids can work from all angles. The raised beds not only help to keep some critters out, they will keep the kids form stepping on the soil, which will make it better for planting. The soil will come in one Thursday, so in preparation we laid weed killing material on the bottom of the boxes, the soil will eventually go on top of it. The maintenance man, Alex, has been a huge help and even brought a staple gun fr us to use! I can't wait for Thursday!