How to Integrate an Outdoor Room into Your Garden Space



Marci's Birthday Present about 50% Completed



1.        Excuses for not Posting

This post is going to be difficult to write because it’s been a while.  The conversation with my self has stopped.  An awkward silence has set in.  The only way to write well is to start and then not stop.  Breaks?   Sure--now and then, a few minutes, a few hours, maybe even a day or two.  But to put the pen or keyboard away for much longer than that is asking for trouble, especially with a blog, since it’s basically an online journal.  Skip a day or two and you risk writing summaries--the deadest of all writing forms.

So, I won’t do that.  Or at least I’ll make the summary concise.  At first I worked 10 hour days to get the garden in, which is important, since we’re counting on canning and freezing our own food to cut the cost of living substantially as our income will also drop substantially next year.  And after the long days of work I was just too tired to write.

Then, one evening while watching TV and looking at the glass doors at the garden I had a vision--an outdoor room for Marci.  As her birthday was coming up in a few days, it was the perfect project.  However, if I wrote a post it would ruin the surprise, and so I didn’t blog for a few more days.  Besides, the new project required  working more 10 hour days, and so once again I was just too tired to write.

However, had I blogged as I progressed, the energy would have been current, the writing fresh.  Especially since I worked through weather extremes:  90 degree plus heat, 65 miles- per-hour-plus winds and temperatures plunged into the low 40s one night.  And that was just in two days!  (But again, climate change is only liberal propaganda aimed at destroying our economy.  No one should actually worry about July and April flip-flopping back and forth on daily basis).

What follows is a photo journal of the progress of Marci’s birthday present.  It’s still not finished.  For one thing, it needs a roof.  But it’s complete enough to get enough to get an idea of how it’ll look.

2.        Photo Journal--How to Integrate an Outdoor Room into Your Garden Space

1.        To recap:  The original railroad tie planting beds for the vegetable garden.

2.       Adding log rails with wire fencing to discourage deer and other animals.  Even though the rails are not high enough to discourage the deer by themselves, I've found that deer avoid cramped quarters.  Even though a low fence around a field is no barrier, that same low fence around a small space works fairly well.

3.   Watching TV one night while looking out the glass door at the garden, I envisioned an outdoor living space integrated into the garden.  Located on the west side, it would shelter the vegetables from the scorching afternoon sun while still allowing morning sunlight to bathe the vegetables.  It would also provide shade for humans.

4.   I wanted to blur distinctions between indoor/outdoor spaces, and so flower beds begin outside the garden room but circle into it, with plantings on both sides of the wall.

5.       Black iron fountain birdbath will bring the sights and sounds of water into the room, again to blur the distinctions between interior and exterior space.

6.       The finished room will have a wire fence roof with branches laid across and tied down.  Lattice walls are raised above the ground level again to allow visual flow between the interior and exterior space.  Originally, I planned on having a brick floor, but decided it was nicer to have the prairie flow right into the partially enclosed space.