A sandy spot in wonderland

We are officially on a roll with our playscaping! With the garden beds built, planted, and protected by a tall, tall fence it was time to move on to the sand pit. We went to our local landscaping center and bought 1200 pounds of local river rock for the bargain price of $18!  Spending a drizzly morning picking through a huge pile of rocks may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it is a geologist's dream!

With a growing mess on the driveway from the mountain of dirt, and then the pile of rocks, we needed to get to work. We marked out the area where we wanted to build the pit, and handy husband excavated the ground with his sturdy shovel and steel shank boots. Waterbug helped, too, with his own shovel.

Ladybug and Waterbug helped to haul the rocks and place them around the pit. 

Then we added a few bags of river pebbles to fill in around and behind the big rocks for stability, and it was ready for sand! 750 pounds of sand later and the sand pit is complete! Not bad for one afternoon's work, and the kiddos agree...and so does a chipmunk who has taken to hiding underneath the tarp cover.

Let the building begin!

Nearly two weeks ago a huge pile of dirt was dumped in my driveway. 

After three full weeks of illnesses being passed around the house, we have finally started work on our garden. The garden will eventually house lots of veggie plants that I will undoubtedly kill, and hopefully some assorted berries that will survive my not-so-green thumb. My handy husband, with some help from the kiddos, is building two raised beds this season, with a third one planned for next year. We have a herd of deer that live in our woods and are always on the lookout for a new buffet, so we will do our best to keep them from eating everything. 

We also planted tons of sunflower seeds in the plot where the vegetable garden used to be. I am seeing sprouts, but I'm not too hopeful because we are seeing some severe flooding this week and the bed was under water, and is still completely saturated. A positive side of the flooding is lots of puddles to splash in, plus the water that washed over the bridge left behind some sand perfect for drawing in!

The weather (aside from the torrential rain) has been on our side and we hope to start work on the dry (or not-so-dry with this weather) stream bed and sand pit later this week!