Spring acomin' and all, I've been trying to figure out what to do with my box herb garden.   


I loved having this herb garden so convenient last year and cannot begin to tell you how much and how often I actually used those herbs for cooking, which surprised even me.  We talked about how to refurbish my box after leaving it outside throughout the winter.  Weather is notoriously bad for boxes of all kinds when kept outdoors and mine is no exception, donchaknow, despite the fact that we really didn't get any snow to speak of this year.  We also noticed a few design flaws when we built it, ones that we would have liked to improve upon if we had it to do over again.  Basically, I'd start over with two palettes, take some of the extra boards off one and nail them onto the other on the back to make a single, solid panel on the backside.  Then not use landscapers fabric at all except for around the bottom to keep the dirt from pooling around the palette's footprint all year.

So my box has been on my mind, as I'm sure you understand.  The KingofHearts has been thinking about my box too and he even offered to bring home a couple of palettes from a local business he'd noticed.  He hadn't gotten around to doing that when Monica (she reads the internet so I don't have to) sent me this link to purchase a Triolife Plant Pyramid.

WANT.

So I forwarded the email to The KoH as I so often do with things I want and typed into the subject line: WANT!  (We're nothing if not communicative.)  Sometimes I send him things marked WANT and he completely ignores me for some reason.  But he knew this was different because of the ! in the subject line, I'm sure.  He took a close look at the video and came home with some measurements he sussed out and the week of the Building a New, Three-Cornered Box was born. 

With new lumber no less.  


So decadent. 

Not entirely new lumber, because we used some of the leftover decking material for parts of it. 

So we're green too!  Two points for us.


I cannot begin to tell you how he was able eyeball it from the video and then reproduce it in real life and that is probably because I am not a Building Things Genius.  It's clearly not exactly the same; some of that was intentional, some wasn't.  With the palette box last year, we found that it worked great in direct sun until about August, when the heat and direct sun tried to kill every single one of my preshus baybee plantz with it's angry rays.  So we moved it under the shade and got a couple more months of really good growth.  It was worth it, because many of the herbs lasted all through the winter and I made Thanksgiving Day stuffing using fresh herbs I strolled out the back door to harvest.  But it took two men and a boy (or more accurately said, one pretty strong adult, one wussy wife and two children who "JUST WANT TO HELP" and who, by their very underfootedness, create a dangerous and deadly scenario of toe amputation possibilities) to move it and it was a pain in the... neck.** 

I wanted casters on the bottom so we could roll it around.


I've shared photos with some people already and have been asked by several for the blueprints, which do not exist.  But I can provide instructions based on my experience of poking my head through the back door every few hours to see the progress:
  • First, to go Big Box Home Improvement Store and purchase eight boards.  Smart People would not bring Children Who Love to Climb on Things in Big Box Home Improvement Store, but we are not Smart People.
  • Cut each board approximately thirty-five and a half times until they fit into one of five basic shapes: Big Triangle, Medium Triangle, Small Triangle, Tiny Triangle and Pyramid On Which To Hang Triangles.
  • Be sure and curse at each board multiple times as that really whips them into submission.  
  • Give Shortlings each a hammer, a handful of nails and a spare board piece and tell them to drive all the nails into the board if they want to "help."  Because you're totally gonna need something like that later.
  • Move on to putting it all together.  Decide you will do this entirely without screws or nails because that's way cooler.  (it totally is)
  • Go to three different Big Box Home Improvement Stores to get more nuts for those casters, because heaven forbid a single Big Box Home Improvement Store sell BOTH screws AND nuts that fit each other... and also because your children lost them in between when you brought them home from Big Box Home Improvement Store and when you walked into back yard. 


  • Have argument with wife because she thinks all the dirt will fall out from in between the tiers where there's more space than on the original.  (Note from wife: Not complaining about the design, I actually love that it's quite a bit taller, I just thought some screen or additional lumber should be added in between the tiers to hold in the dirt.)  
  • Add screen in between the tiers after you start pouring in dirt and you realize it's all falling out. 
  • Listen to wife conspicuously not say, "I told you so."
  • Tell wife you think you should buy six bags of soil; she thinks it should only be four. 
  • After opening four bags of soil and filling box, make mental note to use additional two unopened bags of soil for some other purpose. 
  • Take some time to listen to some music.***
  • Endure undying adoration from wife because THIS IS THE MOST AWESOME THING EVER AND IT WAS TOTALLY WORTH IT AND I WILL NEVER EVER MAKE FUN OF YOU AGAIN.****




*Monica and I have probably had a little too much fun talking about my box, among other things, on The FacePlace recently and more than one of our husbands has complained about our use of innuendo in the country of social media.  But I still maintain that it is not innuendo if you, in fact, MEAN EXACTLY WHAT YOU SAY.  Sorry all of ya'll's minds are in the gutter, but this is, for all intents and purposes, a garden box.

**Keeping it PG for the MPAA

***This post brought to you by Randy Travis

****That part's probably not true.