Connecting a Rain Barrel and other sorts ~ Sowing and Reaping

As we last left our intrepid gardening hero (that’d be me), there were all kinds of problems and nothing was working right. But such is life more often than not, and I think one of the main lessons that we’ll learn through our gardening experiment is that failures are to be expected and one must press on.

So press on we did.  We dumped the wrong-sized gutter adapter for the rain barrel and found another one, being careful this time to make sure that it would actually fit our gutter.  It was a special order of course, and it took forever to arrive, but once it did, it went in pretty smoothly.  I ended up just measuring out how much space it would take up, cutting out that space from the downspout, attached the diverter, put in a few screws, got the hose positioned correctly, jammed it into the barrel, and stood back to admire my work.  For all the hassle that the last job was, this one went incredibly smoothly and event free.  Which was good since I’m not sure I could take another day like the last one any time soon…The rains came about a day later and even though it only rained about an inch or so, our barrel filled right up.  It didn’t even overflow, which meant that the diverter was actually working the intended way!  How great is that?  So now that we had some water, all we needed was some warmer weather to be able to plant stuff.  As things go, it was about a month before that would happen, so instead I found another project to occupy my time.

The impetus for us actually doing this garden this year was that the big rotten tree that shaded our whole back area was cut down.  The removal of the tree was great and made us happy, but it also exposed some ugly wooden poles that come up off our back deck to hold up our deck lights.  So I came up with the brilliant (If I do say so myself) plan to place a cross piece on top of the poles so that plants can hang down and there is some visual interest going on too.  Initially I thought just the cross pieces but once I got them up there I realized they need something else so I got my talented wife to draw me some ornamental facing on a piece of wood that I then cut out and put on the front of the cross piece.  I was quite pleased with the result and now we have more hanging greenery with color to decorate our deck.

So now all the prep is complete and it is time to put some plants in the ground…come back tomorrow for plants and more plants.