Activities for Humans in Equine Rehab: Raised Garden Beds (picture heavy)

If you follow me on Instagram, you already know about this.

The current (8/1/2018) state of the garden.
The spaghetti squash has staged an escape attempt.
Unfortunately, the roses have suffered slightly as I learn about caring for them.

Way back in the start of June, I got a bright idea that I wanted to garden and grow some of my favorite vegetables and plants. Because why not? I barely had time to do everything else I needed/wanted to do, so let's add one more thing. Penn had just been declared to have a tendon injury, I found some free time, and bam, a project was born.

This started out as such a simple project, "I want raised garden beds because I hate kneeling on the ground, and I want them protected from wildlife." Oh boy, this project got a lot more complicated! And I love the final product.

Husband pitched in and helped me build it: aka, I was the support system and he drove the project.

Anyway, without further ado, here's a picture-driven story of building the garden beds!

I helped Husband cut the boards apart, then he did majority of the assembling under a work light in the dark.

Assembled and placed!

Walkway sod has been removed and the beds are ready for dirt.

6/16/2018 - Dirt! Well, half mushroom manure and half topsoil.
2 scoops of each, delivered on Saturday in the morning.

Thank goodness Husband has a Gravely mower/tractor and a cart!

And ramps for the car! This would have been much more difficult without those.

A fun little gif of dirt going in! 4 and a half loads for each bed, then we added even more to each after wetting the soil down. The soil settled quite a bit, we'll have to add a lot more next year.

All full!

Garden cloth down to prevent weeds from coming up through the rock path.

Not enough rocks.

Leftover dirt. We used it to fill ruts in the yard that the truck left over the winter, then planted grass seed.

6/18/2018 - The garden has a door and basic framing for the fence!

Plants purchased!
Yellow Straightneck Squash
Zucchini
Cherry Tomato
Bush Bean
Sunflower Seeds
Spaghetti Squash Seeds
Kaleidoscope Carrots (purchased later)
Radishes (purchased later)

Sunflower seeds planted in neat rows.
4 all yellow Mammoth Sunflower (9-12' tall)
4 Evening Sun Sunflowers (4-5' tall)
4 Mixed Color Sunflower (7-9' tall)
4 yellow and brown Mammoth Sunflower (9-12' tall)

6/18/2018 - I was desperate to get my plants in and growing since I was already a month behind... so everything was planted in the dark at almost 10pm, haha.

Hey look, my calla lilies were doing great and blooming!

6/25/2018 - It took just 7 days for my sunflowers to come up! 13 of the 16 seeds I planted germinated, including 7 out 8 Mammoth Sunflowers. Off to the left, there's one plant not in a row... I wasn't sure if I messed up planting or if that was a weed, so I let it be. It was a weed, lol.

I planted two spaghetti squash just in case one didn't come up. I was SUPPOSED to pull one out... I didn't. I will next time!

Carrot seedlings!

7/1/2018 - Progress on the fencing slowed down as I changed my mind about what kind of fence to use. Originally we purchased large 2"x4" 5' tall fence, but I really loved the 1/2" square hardware cloth that we got for the door. More expensive, but it created a much nicer final product! The mesh cloth ended up almost see through and encourages the eye to look past it.

7/6/2018 - The hardware cloth didn't come wide enough (5' would have been ideal), so we had to purchase 2' and 3' wide rolls, and sew them together with steel wire.

7/6/2018 - The 4th of July holiday long weekend was very productive! We used it to finish the fence and a lot of the final touches.

7/7/2018 - Putting up the outer trim pieces that hide a lot of the staples and the sharp edges of the hardware cloth.
Decorative flowers purchased too!

Oh, and this. As we spent time outside in the yard over 4th of July, we realized we had a Japanese Beetle infestation. The beetles were eating my rose bushes and several of my new vegetable plants, so we got this nifty beetle trap. This was barely 2 days worth of beetles... when we finally threw that bag out, it had about 7 inches of beetles in it.

7/8/2018 - Husband dug up the sod around the beds, and I put garden cloth down.

7/8/2018 - Sod dug, cloth down, roses planted. Ready for mulch!

Another view of ready for mulch and rock!

And the final product!

Humming bird feeder, rain gauge, thermometer, horsey wind chimes, and a cute garden kitty!

Plants!

The very first produce from the garden!

We found wonderful solar powered motion lights so it's easy for me to water when I come home from the barn after dark.
I just want to put a chair in there and sit in it!

 I know this has gotten rather long, and extremely picture heavy, but here's some more pictures!

Eye high by the end of July?

The spaghetti squash continues to be rebellious and has started growing a squash 5' in the air.

The yellow squash is doing well and producing lots of squash, the carrots are still growing, and I planted another row of carrots in the empty space... they haven't grown yet.

The zucchini was trimmed back a little, yet there's still a lot of it. The spaghetti squash is making a run for it. The beans are just trying not to be covered by zucchini!

The wiggly pink flamingo has been overtaken by radishes.

We've had a bunch of yellow squash, zucchini, and string beans from the garden so far. It's been so much fun growing and picking my own vegetables. Sure, it would have been cheaper to just buy them, but this is so fun! I'm also really happy with how pretty the garden ended up. I was worried about it being in the front yard, and the neighbors being unhappy with this huge thing in the yard. I shouldn't have been worried, the neighbors think it looks great.

As we built the frame for the fence, we also hatched a plan to make it a greenhouse in the winter. We'll have to add a peaked roof over it (because it snows here), and a way to vent it, but it should stay fairly warm wrapped up in plastic. The mushroom manure will heat as it decomposes, and the garden will get sun for majority of the day.

Hey, we were happy when we started the project, and were still happy at the end of it!
We were trying to recreate the painting, American Gothic, but in selfie mode and with shovels, haha.

And no worries everyone, we'll get back to Penn soon!

Activities for Humans in Equine Rehab: Biking

Sometime in the end-of-winter-months, Husband decided to go to the local pro bike shop and look for a new bike in anticipation of our trip to Hilton Head this fall. We both enjoyed biking the last two times we were there, but we didn't care for the bikes available to rent. He found something he liked, but left it because it was more than he wanted to spend and he needed to think about it. Fast forward to the beginning of May-ish, he decided to go back and get it.

I opted to go with him to check out the shop and parooze... I had a bike at home that had served me well from age 13ish to through college, and while it was too small for me, I was comfortable on it. I did find something I liked, and it was discounted because it was "last year's model". I test rode it, hemmed and hawed, and left it. I was warned to call right away if I decided I wanted it because they couldn't order another one without a significant jump in price. I went home and rode my old bike and quickly found my balance was quite impaired since the frame was small. I called the next morning and paid for the bike while someone else was out test riding it!

He got a more traditional hybrid that leans more towards road biking, I got a low entry hybrid that let's me sit up like I'm riding a horse!

So that's how Husband and I ended up with new bikes!

I'd been coming home from the barn and riding my bike up and down the street for most of May, but that was getting old quickly. Husband's parents had a bike rack they weren't using and gifted that to us, so once that was home and Husband made a few modifications to it so it could go on his Camaro's trailer hitch, we were free to ride wherever!

Over the weekend, we went to our local rails-to-trails that opened last year. Right now the trail is 5.9 miles long, but there's a plan in place to connect it with 8.5 miles that finishes close to where Penn used to live. There's 7.6 missing miles of trail (you could ride it but it's not groomed yet). The trail will end up being about 22 miles long, and according to the trail website: "Future expansion is in progress to connect the two sections to complete the goal of a 22 mile long trail... and extend four miles to connect to the Great Allegheny Passage."

From GAP Trail's Website
Maybe one day Husband and I will make a crazy trip of riding bikes from pretty close to our house to DC! It would require 11.6 miles of missing trail to be completed, but hey, maybe we'll be in shape to do it by the time they finish! We'll see, haha.

Crazy trips aside, we set out to enjoy our bikes on a local trail. And we did! The trail was wonderfully green, quiet, and very nice riding.

The trail follows a local creek since it was a railroad.

We stopped at a little overlook.

The water was really up because it absolutely downpoured 2 or 3 times that day.

Nice bridges to ride over and look at the creek.

We didn't go very far on Saturday because we spent a lot of time looking around and stopping to look at the creek, but we ended up doing about 6 miles of trail.

Umm, ears pic?

We finished our ride Saturday by figuring out which restaurant by the trailhead belonged to the meat smoker that was cooking wonderful smelling things in the parking lot. We had some delightful cheesesteaks after about an hour and a half of riding (which included several stops to look around), before calling it a night.

Husband and I went back out for round 2 of biking on Monday this week, starting a bit further down the trail, and riding it to the end. We got sidetracked by exploring a local park with a trail that appeared to be bike friendly... it wasn't friendly enough for us, haha. We hauled butt back to the car- we wanted to order from the same grille, but get steak salads this time (which were also good). However, we had a race from where we originally parked to the grille: he had to drive the speed limit and obey all traffic laws to the letter, and I could book it as fast as I could down the 2 miles of trail. Umm, he won. But only by 1-2 min!

Map My Ride for our Monday ride! It's a nifty app, but even niftier on the computer.

I went by myself on Tuesday, being the new addict that I am, and decided to ride the entire trail, end to end (turns out to be 12 miles). The whole first half of my trip was slightly uphill (the trail rises 118ft over 6 miles). And I had a head wind. And I must have been tired from the almost 10 miles the day before. Those first 6 miles sucked, haha. I backtracked to the start of the trail (and old railroad turn around, btw), and then rode back up past my truck and onward. Once I got turned around to go the length of the trail, I realized the first half of the trip was going to suck... a lot. My thighs were burning about 2 miles in, much to my dressagey dismay. But hey, walking Penn isn't building my leg muscles, and that's all I've been doing for 3 weeks now!

1:14:12 to do 12.02 miles and burned 821 calories apparently.

I ended my trip at the same grille (of course), and got a grilled chicken salad, which was delightful again. Husband and I are planning on going riding on Saturday... if only because we're going to eat at the grille AGAIN because on Fridays and Saturdays they have baby back ribs available, and they looked incredible on the Facebook page!