The garden

Today I made the major preparations for my garden. I spent the week building raised beds. Today I put covered the bottom of the raised beds with newspapers and then leaves that I've been saving since last fall. Then I filled the boxes with topsoil so that we can plant something soon.

While we have a fenced yard that keeps the chickens in, I had to put up an additional fence within the yard to keep the chickens out of the garden. While putting the fence up, I watched one of the chickens fly over the fence, into the garden to be with the other chickens. I am hoping that now that I have them all outside of the fence, they will be content there and not fly over into the garden. Seriously, that was the highest and farthest I've seen my chickens fly (4 feet high for about 10 feet).

We planted bulbs and some flower seeds in the front and have big plans for our giant garden area.

This is the first time I have purchased topsoil for a garden. I am having good feelings about that. I think it will help me prevent weeds and I know there are not nearly as many rocks in the soils as normal. I am, however, concerned that the soil didn't seem alive. I have noticed that good soil as little critters in it and I think that is a good thing. The soil that I bought is dead. I hope to reincarnate it, but we'll see.