What's keeping me busy...

Someone emailed me offline recently, commenting that I haven't been very active on blog and asked what's keeping me so busy this year. Well for spring I had to do my Master Gardener course, which was completed in mid-June. So now I'm putting my 100 hours of work, mostly with raising veggies for RAH program - Rutgers Against Hunger (yup, all that squash and beans and soon to be tomatoes). In addition trying to do some work offline with the office, staffing local events like NJ State Fair etc.

On another hand, we are doing some major work landscaping our home property. Or "hardscaping" would be more accurate. Last fall I got the crazy idea that we really need a new patio to have a summer BBQ - the current small deck that we had is odd shaped and not comfortable for sitting. That came to a solidified decision after one of the large tree from back was cut down and left an ugly view. So thankfully having a hubby who's an engineer, I got him to start planning and building it. Yup, all ourselves. No construction crews helping. It's a huge project but it's finally starting to come together. This is what it looked like early in spring before we started.. UGLY!

And after laying everything out, my hubby rented a machine to level area - there was 3 feet difference between left and right side so he had to lower one and raise another to keep it leveled.  And he dug up outline of the future ponds on both sides of the patio while he was at it.

At that point he realized that we'll need retaining wall to keep hill from sliding onto the patio, and on another side to keep patio from sliding to the side. And more construction followed.

Did I mention he's doing that all by hand himself?? Well, I did help with spreading gravel and sand.. but it's mostly him doing the work. So we picked out paving stones and had 16 pallets delivered - he put everyone of them down by hand on top of gravel and sand. Considering that average stone is about 30-35 lbs, this is heavy and exhausting work. But it came out beautiful!

And last week we started setting up furniture - we selected it back in May and it's been sitting in boxes in the addition. So of course my dear honey set it all up himself :)  Two round tables with chairs for taller group and we'll have separate sitting area for "shorties" like myself :)

Here's my sweetheart, working hard on one of the tables - this will be our "dining" table.

The bird-view shot shows how much more we still have to do - edging, ponds, landscaping etc. It' snot complete but it's getting there! I'm so excited that it will be done soon and we'll have a proper place to entertain. Now we have to select gazebo with cover for sitting area and some additional soft furniture. In the meanwhile, we picked out whole lot of cut stones for ponds and that's our next few week's project. Then I'll step in for landscaping.

So yes, together with our gardens, community garden, farm, MG work and this -  we've been busy :)