DIY Garden Projects

I been working diligently on the Secret Garden overhaul this past week. I keep trying to remind myself that it always looks much worse before it looks better. Most of my time was taken up with construction and garden craft projects, which I'll get to in a moment.

I was also able to convert all of the garden's sprinkler heads to drip irrigation. The drip lines running all over the place don't look gorgeous right now, but they will certainly help make the garden look lovely. They'll also make things a little easier for me, as I'll no longer have to worry about the pop up heads beating the living daylights out of some plants while completely missing others. Better yet, I was able to run micro drippers straight up the fence and into my elevated planters. Everyone will think that I run out every day to water them. It will be our little secret. The cost to convert was free, thanks to the folks at DIG Corporation and their contest I won last year. I couldn't get these in until I cleared the garden.

The conversion head with the lines snaking around the garden

At this point, you all know that I like power tools and must find building projects to keep me occupied. The new garden design involves planters, so I've built the first of four. I'm not pleased that it cost $27 to build, but I have plans for bringing down the cost of the others.

No idea why the top looks warped...anxiously
awaiting the return of my DSLR from the Nikon hospital

If you ever read a blog post in which someone explains how to do a project and claims that it's easy, even though it looks somewhat complicated, I suggest that you just consider it really complicated. I've taken a risk on something that I really hope pays off because making this succulent sphere was tons of work, and I have yet another one to make. Cost? $35 each. Big risk.

Here's hoping the succulent sphere fills in

Finally, I have spent three years trying to find the right lighting solution for the garden, but have always come up short. I'm feeling pretty good about what I'm working on now, though. I bought a grapevine wreath from Michael's for $6 (thanks to a 40% off coupon), and after soaking it in the bathtub for a day to make it pliable, I've made 4 grapevine balls that form the structure of my lights. That's all the more information I'm going to give right now.

How is that a light?

So, I've really not shown you much this week, just hints of what you'll hopefully see when the garden is complete. It's all pretty unnerving at this point. After all, it could go so spectacularly wrong. But it's fun to try something and see how it works out.