If not smarter, I’m at least more open-minded 🙂
We moved to a new house in October 2013. Only half a mile down the road from our old house, it gave us another bedroom, another bathroom, a nicer pool, and an actual backyard. The only thing I miss about the old place (besides the neighbors*) is my garden. My rosemary bushes were all about waist high; I still had parsley and Greek oregano and thyme and a few other herbs.
I didn’t want to dig up the lawn and make a garden bed, so I decided to try to imitate this idea instead.
I put the pic on my phone and asked the lady at the front of Home Depot what she recommended for the grate. She didn’t really understand what I was asking for so she called the Garden Guy to the front desk. He hemmed and hawed and told me there was nothing in the garden section that would serve; I should go ask the folks down at Lumber. Which I did.
Lumber Guy thought really hard and brought me to the gate section. Thick, sturdy fencing securely attached to a rigid metal border. Perfect! . . . wait, does that price tag really say $159??? Holy crap!
Lumber Guy agreed that it was a pretty expensive solution and recommended that I build a frame of two-by-fours and staple fencing to it. I explained that I don’t do home improvement stuff, just garden stuff. I wanted to tell him I don’t do staple guns, only real guns, but it didn’t seem productive. He regretfully told me there was nothing in the store that would suit my purposes.
So I wandered around until I found the security bars to put over windows and decided they would suit just fine. THEN I went out to the garden section to measure bags of potting soil and discovered the garden-fence-section racks. PERFECT. *EXACTLY* what I needed.
A few sawhorses, bags of potting soil, seed packets and assembly later, I had the makings of my garden:
Next post I’ll show you how my seedlings are doing!
*It may seem funny that moving half a mile down the road has such a drastic impact on how much I hang out with the nice ladies by the old house, but it does. We all have kids. Whereas previously I could poke my head out and see if anyone was outside playing, I now have to text them and work out schedules to visit. I’ve lost that casual the-whole-neighborhood-is-chatting-at-the-corner vibe.