I set out to prove that I have none of my dad’s woodworking skills this weekend. Norman, Jane and I have been talking about putting together a garden for a while now and we finally got the ball rolling. They worked on clearing the blackberry bushes and I set sights on building some boxes.

After a very expensive trip to our local home building store for materials, I attempted to slap together some boards with large shiny objects. I knew that carpentry is a lot of manual labor, but I forgot how intense squatting and handling a drill for hours on end can really be.

We are doing raised beds so we don’t have to mess with our local toxic soil too much. The first box took me probably about 5 hours to put together. For some reference on the difficulty of the project, the second box took me about an hour and a half. I consider myself fairly intelligent, good with my hands even. Something about putting 8 boards together threw me for such a loop that I was completely frustrated.

My neighbor made things worse by popping by and tried giving me “tips”. Those tips were to do things completely different of course… with materials that I didn’t just spend a bunch of money on. I shushed him away as soon as I could without being rude.

I never learn anything without messing it up though. I learned quite a bit on this project. For instance, every trade has their own cryptic measuring system that nobody (except the insiders) can possibly understand. Does 2 x 2 mean a board is actually 2″ x 2″? Of course not. Duh. Everyone knew that. 2 x 6? Two of those stacked equal about a foot, right? Maybe! Measuring stuff is for chumps. Eyeballing is where the real action happens. I like a little adventure with my wood working.

They may not be the most beautiful boxes ever assembled, but they are going to grow the hell out of some vegetables.