Using what you've got

Since we've had such great weather which gave us so much time before we could plant, we decided to build stepping pads from our patio into the garden.  We used leftover bricks from resetting the patio and built frames out of the fence John kicked down.

Yes, we know that wood frames buried in the ground will eventually rot, but the soil from the garden should be holding the bricks in place by then.  So we're good.

John in action!

Also, since we've had such great weather we made our kids come outside and help us build the stepping pads to the garden.  

But first the answer to the question:  "Why build stepping pads from your patio to the garden?"

Answer:  Because we took the railroad ties out of the new! improved!! patio, we added about 4 feet to the garden.  I saw 2 problems with this:

1.  We did not need 4 extra feet of garden.  We never imagined that we would have this much space and it is overwhelming, not to mention that I don't think the neighbor (Hi Linda!) is too happy about her view of vegetables.  I suspect she was hoping for some lovely flowers...  so we were trying to minimize the amount of unruly veggie plants and not let ourselves get to crazy with overplanting.  We are taking it easy this first year to see how it goes...

2.  On those rainy days when you just have to have a tomato/pepper/herbs, we thought it would be nice to have a dry path from the house to the tomato/pepper/herbs without having to get our feet muddy.

So there.

We decided that 3 pads would serve our purposes nicely and use the leftover bricks perfectly.  John measured how big the frame should be so we wouldn't have to cut any bricks and he and Sam went to town dismantling the discarded fence to harvest a few good pieces to build the frames for the bricks.

Don't let this fool you, Sam did most of the nailing.
I just happened to take the picture when Will was working.

Sorry Sam.

Look how excited they are!   It's infectious isn't it??  Not even 3 seconds after Will nailed the frame and I took the picture, they both were saying "Are we done?"  Gah.  These apples are falling pretty far from the tree aren't they?  No we are NOT done.

Deciding on the layout.  I don't think there is anything worse than getting done with a project
and noticing that it is not quite even on one side.

So worth it.

Next was the super exciting layout phase.  This is where we set them down, step back and move any/all of them fractions of inches before we decide we like where they are and pick them up to level them.

So, when the layout was finally right we picked up the frames (which for some reason pissed off the kids - I think because we spent a lot of time getting them just right, or maybe they thought they were closer to being done and free from landscaping hell) and made sure that the top of the bricks were level with the top of the patio so it would be a seamless transition from patio to garden.  

Don't know why I took pictures from 2 angles, but...

...you're welcome. 

Now all we had to do was recreate the same process as laying the patio using the same basketweave pattern and finish them off with sand in the gaps between bricks.  

This really took about an hour from start to finish, but you'd think that we had worked those kids since dawn.  At this point, John and I were more than happy to tell the kids they were free to do as they pleased.  And then they disappeared for the next few hours until they got hungry.  Quality parenting.

Here they are done and ready for action.

We also turned over the existing dirt and added some compost.
Now we wait until we can plant some veg and herbs! 

Cost breakdown:  $0

The cost to our kids' psyches from this hour of torture is yet to be measured, but I know they were both proud when they saw the finished product and knew they had built a part of our garden that would last a long, long time.