Building a garden

Saturday, after the 5K, I had wanted to come home and take a nap.  I had stayed up a little late the night before and hadn't slept well b/c of my nerves.  Instead, from 10 am to 5 pm, I worked in the yard.

First, I used landscape timbers and built a raised bed vegetable garden.  Mr. Incredible rented a garden tiller from Home Depot, and when he got back with it, I tilled up the soil where the garden would be placed, along with another garden in our backyard.  While I tilled, Mr. Incredible went and bought a truckload of mulch.  I must say, using that tiller may have been one of the hardest physical things I've ever done.  It required so much upper body to control it and so much of my core to keep it from driving willy-nilly all over the yard.  When I told Mr. Incredible that, he laughed at me and said, "I was using bigger tillers than that when I was 6 years old."  As much as I love that guy, sometimes I just want to deck him.

When he got back with the mulch, he pushed it off the back of the truck into Agent P's new playground area that we built.  He went for a load of dirt for the vegetable garden.  Meanwhile, I shoveled and raked and carried the mulch all around Agent P's swingset.

When Mr. Incredible came back with the dirt, we unloaded it and loaded up the vegetable garden.  I also moved all of that dirt around.

While Mr. Incredible took the tiller back, I mowed.  Our house sits right next to a drainage ditch and the hill leading down to that drainage ditch is pretty steep and very precarious to mow.  I had never mowed that part before, always opting to leave it for Mr. Incredible's strong arms to mow.  But I decided on Saturday that I could do it. So I mowed the front, side, and scary drainage hill sides of the yard.  When he got back, Mr. Incredible gave me grief about not mowing the backyard too.  Again, see my comment from above.  I think he just likes to give me a hard time.  I told him not to worry, I would mow it for him on Mother's Day, because that's how much I love him.  (Thank goodness it rained on Mother's Day and I couldn't mow!)

Finally, I washed out the truck bed, so that we could return it to Mr. Incredible's dad.  All told I spent about 7 hours out there working in the yard, with only a break for lunch and to drive to my parents to pick up more landscape timbers.

Since there were some breaks in there, I decided to underestimate the amount of time I spent working. I only entered 4 hours of gardening on myfitnesspal.  Between the gardening and the 5K, it told me that I burned 2464 calories!  That's more than I get in a whole day for eating!  That night we celebrated Mother's Day with my mom, I made healthy choices at dinner, but I did use some of my extra calories for some ice cream later in the night.  It was completely worth it!

On Sunday, every muscle in my body ached.  But now we have a nice, fancy vegetable garden (we just have to plant the vegetables).  Agent P has a soft place to land if he falls off his monkey bars. And the front yard looks nice for a few days.  It was a very successful, active day and I really enjoyed it.

(Sorry for the lack of pictures, I was going to take some, but it is still raining pretty hard.)