Cindy Riddle: In Over my Head?

Last summer I went out with a weekend full of hard work. I am determined to welcome this years hard earned summer by playing more than I work. Since I wanted to expand my garden this year, I got to work early.

I started by moving some plants.

My Vet and a friend took care of tilling up, and adding manure to the area I had marked for the expansion.

Looking good, but more than the plants are missing.

With the heavy work done, I power-washed the remaining traces of manure out of the trailer, and picked up some landscape timbers for the edging.

Pretty straight forward 2 timbers high, with staggered seems, screwed together with galvanized deck screws. At 3 feet by 17 1/2 this new section is large enough for 4 tomato plants, 4 pepper plants and a ton of carrots. The piece in the foreground is darker because it was salvaged from where I cut in to mix the new section with the old.

Since this new section runs along the garage, I needed to tackle the issue of rain water. Water is good for plants, thousands of gallons running of the roof onto small seedlings will kill them. Gutters don't look to complicated, I figure I can tackle it on my own.

I prepped by watching a clip of my favorite show. (BTW what can't Tommy Silva do?)

I took notes as I watched. Hmm, there is more to this than I initially thought. Said goodbye to My Vet and The Girls and off to the store. I picked up all the pieces I figured I would need and headed home.

Assembling the pieces was similar to doing a jigsaw puzzle. Time to permanently assemble. I called My Vet away from working under the New to Us Pickup, so he could show me how to rivet. It was a lot like using my cropadile.

Pre-drill and load the rubber coated aluminum rivet (grommet?) into the hand tool.

Insert into the hole.

Pull the trigger.

Not perfectly aligned! Not visible from the
ground though so OCD should be OK.

Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. I am not sure exactly how many I was suppose to do, 4 per seam felt flimsy so I did 6 (2 in the front and 4 in the back).

Give all the joints a water tight seal with joint sealer. (Not really sure how important this is since it will only be in operation when it is raining everywhere, but Tommy said to do it and who am I to argue that logic?)

Clip in the gutter hangers at regular intervals. (I used 22 for 26 feet of gutter.) Assembly took me about 2 hours.

With everything assembled on the ground. My Vet came back to lend his strength and hands to hang this light but awkward 26 feet of aluminum.

Self tapping screws anchored the various pieces of the down spout at the rear of the garage. I didn't put in a down spout in the front yet, I am thinking a rain chain would be pretty, so I will keep you posted. I couldn't find a hack saw to shorten the downspout, so My Vet stepped in again.

My Vet rocking his Iowa State shirt.

It doesn't seem like that much work, but I ache and I didn't even get any plants in the ground yet! I am looking forward to the fun part though. The Girls and I will be hitting up some green houses this week. Are you planning on playing or working Memorial Day weekend?