Raised garden beds are on their way

Yesterday was a public holiday here in New Zealand, and it was a beauty of a day. I wanted to be out in my garden, but instead was stuck in bed with tonsillitis. 

Luckily for me, my brother-in-law across town wasn't holed up in bed. Nope, he was busy being amazing. 

Remember a wee while back I mentioned that he had some spare lumber he could give me to build raised garden beds. Well, yesterday, he cut up all that wood into the sizes I needed, and then took it one step further by building all the beds that will be free-standing in the lawn. 

Oh my!

This is the photo he sent me at the end of the day with this message, "5 beds made up and components for the rest are cut up..."

I am completely blown away. That someone would use their precious day off to cut up wood and build gardens for me, it's staggering. So out-of-this-world kind. I don't really know how to reciprocate it either. I guess I'm going to have to grow some mighty fine produce in these gardens, so I can share it with Ben and my sister, Mel.

The free-standing garden beds are going to go in this space:

Raised garden beds will go here.

And we are also going to build garden beds to frame this deck, so those are the components Ben was talking about in his message:

Garden beds will frame the deck.

I used my trusty garden journal to plan my garden out a few weeks ago.

My friend, Jodie, gave me this journal many years ago, and I dearly love it. I measured up all my spaces and figured out how many gardens I could fit in and how much wood I'd need to build them. I sent those measurements to Ben, and now, because of him, I'm one step closer to my dream of growing an edible oasis. 

Garden plans. 

Ben is planning to load all the raised beds and parts onto a trailer and bring them across in a couple of weekends time.

Before then I want to level the areas where the gardens are going to go, and collect as much filler material as I can for the raised beds. I'll be asking cafes for their spent coffee grounds, visiting beaches for seaweed, picking up Autumn leaves and grass clippings, trying to source animal manure, mulch and pea straw from somewhere, and collecting saw dust from next to the tree we had cut down.

Exciting times for Craving Fresh. We might get some fresh back in our diet.

What's happening in your garden?