So it has begun.

I mentioned back in January that we might be tackling a little gardening project.  “WE” to this point mostly means me photographing and Hubs and Grandpa doing A LOT of work ~ while Grandma helps me wrangle in the Littles. FULL team, FULL family effort!

This is where we started a few a few weekends ago…

Then the Littles helped Hubs bring in a sod cutter (did you know you can do day rentals for most home improvement equipment?) We used Home Depot ~ they don’t know us from Adam. I take that back, we are there so much, they totally know us…but our projects are all our own doing. Darn it.

Addie thought the wheel barrel made for a good necklace holder…and the Home Depot bag made a good purse too.

Hubs gave the sod cutter a trial run. Who knew it would be such a cinch? Cut it, roll it, load it and go.

Then life got a little interesting. The girls noticed when rolling back sod, it brought LOADS of “cute” little worms to the surface!

“WHOA! Mom, did you see these!!??”

I did, I did. I’m focusing on them being a sign of a healthy garden and not on how slimy they are…

While Hubs tackled the sod removal…

Grandpa (who I’ve nicknamed “Farmer John” for this little garden project…even though “John” has nothing to do with his name.  The Littles like to call him “Ole McDonald” sometimes too….hee, hee!) Anyway, Grandpa took on the ugly cinder brick wall that our neighbors built before we moved in.

We are planning on growing our current citrus trees, and the new avocados, beans, cucumbers, apples….loads of goodness, along this wall. So Grandpa set out drilling screws and running wire to espalier (meaning train the trees, etc. to grow along the wall).

Still looking ugly, but I have high hopes!

I took on photographing, pointing out things they might not have thought about, and proclaiming the obvious…..

“Look! one of the artichoke plants from last year has an artichoke!!”

And then photographing it. They are all so lucky I was there.

OK, kidding aside, I might have actually helped a bit on this particular project day. I might have rolled about 20 of these sod loads to our driveway for Hubs. This after I had finished Erica’s boot camp for Team Tiny Oranges in the morning. Oh, and Piper came with me to boot camp because it had been a rough night for all of us. Didn’t feel right leaving Hubs with all 3 Littles. So Pipe’s came and I did the boot camp with her on my back.  Then I came home and rolled a billion of these to our driveway.

And then my body ceased to function for all of Sunday.

Literally, I could not move and would have taken the ENTIRE bottle of Advil had it been legal (or if there had been more than 6 pills in the whole bottles…).

OK, enough about me.

But by the end of the day, I was wondering what on earth we had gotten ourselves into….

Stay tuned….