Backyard nears completion

After some long days of hard work this past weekend, we've added two major new elements to the backward that really transform it into an entire garden.

First, I built a wood raised bed for shrubs. We installed it in the middle of the yard to act as a visual screen between the first third of the yard and the vegetable garden beds. I selected and planted some vertical-growing shrubs -- sky pencil Japanese holly and golden euonymus that I'll prune the crap out of -- for the effect.

If you remember, we decided against wood for the vegetable raised beds. This time around, without worrying about eating anything that comes out of the box, I was going to go with pressure-treated lumber. But what I found in wide enough widths was too thick (2") for my liking and looked like I was building a boat. I went with 1" untreated pine in foot-wide lengths to create roughly a 2x8x2 box. I then used the USDA wood preservative to treat it. The recipe for that is:
1 oz paraffin wax
1.5 cups of linseed oil
enough mineral spirits/paint thinner/turpentine to make a gallon total.

It was way more than I needed for this project. I followed an internet suggestion to grate the paraffin wax rather than melt it, as the recipe calls for, in a double-boiler. I like my kitchen gear too much for that. After a few days the sealant looked more emulsified, so maybe give it a day if you use the grating method before applying. Water beaded on the boards, so it looks like this may work ok.

With the box in place we then dug out much of the remaining turf in the back yard and put down a patio. There's a million places to learn how to do this out there so I'll spare you how we did it. Long story short, we pulled this off and without major disaster/killing each other. The hardest part was figuring out how the irregular-shaped pavers we had bought fit together (suggestion: take a picture of your dry run first). Also, you're gonna be seriously sore in strange places -- the hand tamper I rented to pound the base really made my hands sore the next day.Tamping is basically the same process the ancient Chinese used to build large blocks for fortifications and palaces, so now I have an idea of what conscripted labor was like back then. Except I got to stop and have a beer.

It's a little more sloped than I hoped for, but we ate on it last night just fine.