One MILLION dollars, er, I mean, pounds of dirt

The warm weather had us feeling ambitious this weekend, so I decided to create another bed along the fence (where the "X" is below), and Scott decided to build two new raised beds for our vegetable garden.

Once again, digging up the weeds in the new bed area was tough. The tine on this cultivator bent and then the wood handle snapped! Oh well, it's quite old and was a hand-me-down, so we weren't devastated (seriously, when did JC Penney sell branded gardening tools?).

I had my Austin Powers/Dr. Evil moment with the cultivator's severed head/hand:

"I know what we need - one MILLION pounds of dirt!" And so it was...

We rented a truck from Lowe's and got three yards of Mrs. Hutto's bedding mix. This ended up being much cheaper than having dirt delivered or buying it in bags. We needed a lot for filling the two raised beds and working into the clay in the new fence bed.

Here is my wonderful husband building one of the new raised beds:

Here is the new fence bed. I really want to plant hydrangeas here, and maybe some daylilies. It's in part shade. What do y'all think? Any tips or recommendations?

One of the new raised beds is on the right. The other one will go in the bottom right corner after we get an old stump ground this week.
And in a month or so, some of these babies will be planted in the raised beds!

So far beefsteak tomato, yellow pear tomato, basil, and some annual flowers have sprouted. I have to give a shout out to Botanical Interests. I am a sucker for pretty packaging, but didn't expect their seeds to be anything special. It turns out their seeds are incredible in both germination rate and speed. Some germinated in three days!

I love checking on my seeds every day and finding new life!