Green Thumb and Reciprocating Saws

I know, I know - you usually don't think about growing things and saws in the same train of thought. It will make sense - promise!

So the whole story started here: http://pinterest.com/pin/212091463673759201/ (thanks a lot Pinterest!) and then I mentioned it to my SIL who just happened to have some pallets she wanted to get rid of! The girls loved having a watering the playing in the water I sprayed toward the garden last year, and got super excited whenever they got to pick the vegetables, but I wasn't willing to till up part of our brand new back yard just to grow some stuff. Perfect solution!

I finally got Caleb to go get the pallets...and then I had no plans. The pin link didn't exactly give good details. So here's how I took four pallets and made them into our garden for this year!

I started out with 4 pallets...of varying sizes and conditions. I wasn't sure if any of them were deep enough to plant anything in so I decided to nail two of them together.

Unfortunately, the edges didn't line up so I had to add some new wood to make this happen. Who knew that pallets weren't really that uniform in size! 

This one I left as is because it had wider openings - I planted vine vegetables in this one because they don't root as deep.

And this one, I added shelves onto to make it a standing herb garden.

All of the crates got wrapped in landscaping fabric to 1) hold in the dirt and 2) keep out the weeds. Yay for staple guns! 

This is what it looks like when you don't know how to calculate the cubic footage of pallets in order to buy enough soil. Apparently it takes a lot more than I "calculated" - good thing Lowe's is having a sale on garden soil this week!

Finished! The pallet on the left is the doubled up pallet and has peppers, green beans, and celery. The one on the right has cucumbers and green squash. And the herb garden currently just has dirt - I have to decide which herbs I want most!

As with most outdoor gardens, markers can be a problem because they get destroyed outside (unless you have a fantastic memory and can remember what you planted where) so I took care of mine with a sharpie :)

And that's our pallet garden - hopefully we'll start to see something soon! It was a little more work that I initially thought, but am definitely looking forward to the fact that 1) we can use it year after year; 2) it can be moved so we aren't stuck in one area; and 3) it's just fun to grow things!

This is the part of the story that involves the reciprocating saw:

Ugh. 

This tree has been there since we moved in. It has been taunting us with it's nasty yellow pollen that it drops all over the yard. And really, who likes a tree that looks like it's growing plastic bags after every wind storm?!?

So I cut it down. I probably wasn't supposed to since it wasn't in our yard, but it's causing little sprouts of green nasty weeds to grow in the corner. 

*Note: if you are ever attempting to cut down a mesquite tree (which is what this turned out to be on closer observance) I recommend you go change out of your capris and flip flops first. And wear gloves. And a hat if you don't like nasty yellow pollen flakes in your hair. The end.

Now I'm sitting here listening to the thunder and hoping for some rain to give the seeds a kick start!