Garden Makeover: 2013

The last time we talked over 2 months ago, I was super excited for my complete garden makeover. I could barely contain myself. And then, there was complete radio silence from my end. Hmm. Sorry about that.

Well, things have been happening over here, just very slowly. Life has sort of been getting in the way of my garden plans. (I'm sure we all know how that goes, right?) But I'll show you what we've got so far. It all started with four overgrown raised beds:

Then, a very nice crew of men came in and pulled them out, along with much of our lawn (much to my daughter's dismay): 

They put some lovely edging around it all, as well as some irrigation lines. (The irrigation lines aren't shown here, but trust me. They are there.)

At this point, my husband tried to till the whole lot, but it was taking far too long with our little electric tiller. So we decided to call in the crew of guys to help us once again. But first, we had to wait for it to dry out, because the Arizona monsoons had hit:

 

Once everything had dried out, the guys tilled things up. Then, we brought in 42 bags of compost to amend the soil. (For those of you who are wondering, yes, we did look into other options like trucking in local compost from Singh Farms, but it just wasn't practical for us.)

Last weekend, my daughter and I opened all those bags and spread them across the plot. Assuming life doesn't get in the way again, we should be able to till the compost into the native soil this weekend and start planting (knock on wood, crossing fingers, throwing salt over shoulder). 

I admit that the past couple months, I have been out of the habit of gardening. Most of this work has been done by a crew of hired workers--not by me and my family. But I expect I should be able to get back into the swing of things again. I hope so. This is prime time for gardening in Arizona and I'm all set to take advantage of it. 

Happy gardening everyone. I hope you're all set to take advantage of this beautiful weather too!