Metalsgirl: pallet garden

 A few weeks ago I saw the coolest thing on Pinterest.  Hang on, let me back up.  I pretty much think Pinterest is the coolest thing,but I am trying to detox from it some...I was a tad bit obsessed for a couple of weeks.  Just ask Tom.  Anyway, I saw these pallet gardens - basically a ready made raised bed but even better because 1. they have built in rows  2. it's recycling  3. they are free  So it's win win win.  I had also seen on Pinterest that laying wet newspaper down over your weeds, grass, what-not, and then putting the dirt over it was a great way to stop the weeds from coming through.  So we pulled a double Pinterest and started installing these, maybe three weeks ago.

 We planted tomatoes, radishes, a couple peppers, tomatillos, okra, watermelon, lettuce, green beans, cucumbers, spinach, basil, oregano, thyme, chamomille, lavender...I think that's all.  We put in seven of these things!  I did reserve one for zinnias so that I could have cut flowers all summer.

Over Easter weekend we took Tom's mom to The Great Outdoors.  It's a fantastic nursery on South Congress here in Austin.  While we were there we came across these gorgeous Meyer Lemon trees.  Tom flipped out because he is such a lemon nut.  We snatched one up...but it's been sitting in the pot since then because we could not figure out where to put it where it would do well and be safe from the dogs, ahem, peeing on it.

Over the weekend Tom decided if her planted it in the middle of  a pallet the dogs wouldn't be able to get to it and we could just pop boards out as it grew.  Done.  It looked pretty lonely out there so we decided to turn the whole thing into a little garden for Daisy.  Tom's mom had given us some daisy seeds in our Easter basket, we got some varieties of daisy's from the nursery and we spent Sunday building this little garden for our girl.  I was thinking I might spread some of her ashes out there until my mom reminded me that she would absolutely hate being outside and would much prefer her ashes to be right in the closet where she belongs.  It made me giggle through my tears and I knew that she was right.  The garden is for us.

 

Tom turned one of the pallets on it's end, disassembled another pallet and used it's remains to put bottoms on the rows so that they would hold dirt and Voila! we have vertical gardening!  This is our little Daisy garden.  The daisy's are sharing space with strawberries, some herbs, and some nasturtiums.  It might not be a place Daisy would have spent time or even have known it existed.  But it will do Tom and I some good.