Natural Perspectives:

The FedEx guy delivered several boxes of excitement to our house last week. After months of drooling over the Gardener’s Supply Co. catalog, I finally ordered a number of things to make our yard even more sustainable.

Last winter, Vic and I talked about getting a rain barrel to store rain from the roof. The first step was getting a gutter and downspout installed. I contacted Paul Evans of A-Flow Rain Gutters here in Huntington Beach. Based on experience with storing rain at his own house, he estimated that rainfall from the north side of our house would fill three rain barrels with each rainfall. Paul made his own rain barrels out of plastic trash cans and some PVC faucets.

Lacking such construction skills, I bought one of the nifty models of rain barrels offered by Gardener’s Supply Co. Mine is brown polyethylene molded to look like an old-fashioned wooden rain barrel. It has a flat back, so it sits flush against the wall, a fine mesh screen to keep out debris and mosquitoes, connectors to hook several in series, and a threaded faucet high enough to get a watering can under it. It even has a rain gauge so I can see how full it is.

The most exciting part of my order was materials for two raised garden beds. Made of composite lumber (recycled wood fiber and plastic), these “Forever Raised Beds” are things of beauty. My 3-by-6-foot beds are 10 inches high and look like silvery, aged cedar. Unfortunately, some assembly was required.

Each side consisted of two 5-inch-wide composite boards held together by aluminum braces, with L-brackets on the ends of the long boards. A tiny pack of 16 wood screws was included. The directions said that the only tools required were a level and an electric drill. I held up a wood screw and our drill and said to myself, “Huh? How the heck is that supposed to work?”

My woodworking skills are pretty much limited to tossing a log onto a campfire. In desperation, I called Vic at his office at Golden West College.

Vic said that he’d assemble the beds, but that he was busy grading papers and couldn’t get to it right away. I was too excited to wait. I wanted those beds up now. He also said that we are the only people in America who do not have an electric screwdriver. He informed me that I could use the drill to pre-drill holes in the composite lumber, then install the screws manually with a Phillips screwdriver. Sounded easy enough.

I chose a drill bit that was a tad smaller than the screws. But plastic lumber is heavier than wood. Man-handling — or, in my case, woman-handling — the heavy boards to their intended location in the garden took some work. I managed to get them from the front door to the backyard by carrying them one at a time.

Before I could assemble them, I had to create some space for the new beds. I had to remove a river rock border around a 5-foot circle that delineated my existing vegetable garden. Already growing there were a half-dozen bell peppers, several butternut squash growing up a metal cage support, and a nice crop of scarlet runner beans twining up 9-foot-tall sunflower stalks. Converting a 5-foot circle to a 3-by-6-foot rectangular raised bed meant that some existing veggies would be in the future pathway between the two raised beds. I could live with that.

I threaded the first long board carefully between the sunflower stalks and the butternut cage. Then I positioned a short board so I could drill into the lumber through the pre-drilled aluminum bracket on the long board. Holding the two boards together and upright long enough to do that was a challenge.

Chanting is supposed to be calming, so I chanted some swear words.

I used the level as I went, adjusting the height of the boards as needed.

It took me an hour to install 16 little screws. I felt like an idiot. But I was a proud idiot, because I had just built a beautiful raised garden bed frame by myself.

I tossed in some of my homemade compost. But filling the frame to the top will have to wait until the existing summer crops inside are done.

My herb garden has been the focal point of our back yard, but it had grown out of control.

I don’t really need that many herbs, and it was occupying the sunniest spot in the yard. Reducing the size of the herb garden in favor of raised vegetable beds seemed the sensible thing to do for more sustainable living.

Before installing the second bed, I would have to deconstruct part of my herb garden and several feet of sandstone pathways.

That was going to wait for the next day.

In the evening, I sat down with my copy of Mel Bartholomew’s book, “Square Foot Gardening,” and blocked out what I wanted to plant in my raised beds this fall.

This is the exciting stage of gardening, the anticipation before cold, hard reality sets in. Seeds not sprouting, seedlings dying off, plants getting devoured, and the inevitable crop failures are all in the future.

Right now, I’m amazed at how much can theoretically be grown in a 3-by-6-foot raised bed.

In between his classes and Coastal Cleanup Day at Bolsa Chica, Vic dug up the area for the second raised bed.

I got the area leveled and assembled half of the second bed before Vic returned from his battles with Russian thistle at Bolsa Chica. He finished the assembly of bed two.

The next day, I filled the second bed with compost and manure, and planted my fall veggies. All that’s left to do is to watch them grow.

If you’d like to follow in our footsteps, check out rain barrels and raised garden beds at www.gardeners.com.

VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and environmentalists. They can be reached at [email protected].