The last of the dirt is now in the frame and now I’m hoping for some rain so that the dirt will settle in a little. It’s pretty fluffy right now, and I’d like to get it a little more compacted before planting. The good news is that there’s still a few more weeks of waiting before we’re out of the woods as far as freezes go. As I recall, north Texas last freeze date is something like March 18.

Living Earth came by this morning and dropped off four yards of soil and a yard of mulch. I’ve started moving it from the driveway to the garden, and have gotten about two thirds of it moved. Doing this has really made me appreciate my desk job!

I’ve also added some more pictures to the album.

I finally got around to exporting the pictures that I took while building the garden from Aperture into my Gallery installation. If you’re interested, here’s the link. It’ll be updated with more photos as more stuff, like the dirt and the frames for the climbing plants, get added.

I got home from work to find the new feeder on my front step. It’s definitely bigger than my old one was, and looks to be a lot sturdier. I ordered the medium sized one because, even though they’re on diet/light food, two Maine Coons eat a bit more than a pair of average sized cats would. The medium sized one comes with a whip to stir the food as it’s dispensing as well, which was a nice feature.

Now on to the details. Unlike the last one, this one dispenses using an auger so there are less things to go wrong. The downside to that method is that you’ve got to figure out how long to run the auger for in order to dispense the amount you want. The estimate in the manual was just a little bit off, and with two trial runs I got it down to the correct amount of time. The timer on this one is pretty full featured. You can set up to eight dispenses per day, dispensing different amounts of food for each one of them. That alone makes this thing worth the money.

So if you’re looking for a pet food dispenser that’s a little better than what I’ve seen in the pet stores, head on over to AutoPetFeeder.com and see what they’ve got to offer. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Alex and Mike came over today to help me pick up parts and get the irrigation system put together. I can’t take any credit for the design, it was Alex’s idea, but it looks like it’ll do a good job of keeping the roots moist. Basically, it’s a kind of french drain. We used some two inch PVC pipe to create a loop that has small holes drilled in the underside to trickle moisture in to the soil without having most of it evaporate from sitting on the surface. There is a five foot tall standpipe on one side that will be used to fill the system and act as a reservoir. Right now, with nothing around the pipes it won’t fill up, but we’re expecting that with some dirt around it the flow will be a little slower and we’ll get the reservoir effect we’re looking for.

One more trip to Home Depot down and I’ve got the rest of the bolts that I didn’t have and have gotten the rest of the frame assembly completed. It had to be moved so that it didn’t lay at an angle because, apparently, my back yard has a slope. Now that it’s done, I’ve got an irrigation system to build and dirt to order.

The boards are dry and the assembly went pretty well, up until the point where I ran out of bolts because I miscounted. The frame is completely together, but there are some places where I’m going to have to put more bolts in. It only took three trips to Home Depot to pick up parts and tools that I either forgot or didn’t have. As for the missing bolts, that’ll be the fourth trip. I’ll pick them up on the way home from church tomorrow.

I got the remaining sides of the boards stained today so they should be dry by the time I start putting them together tomorrow. The weather’s holding so we’ll see…