The appeal of modular systems, or, stacking things on top of other things

I’m not going to bother with explaining why I’ve been out of touch for most of the second half of 2021, as it was 2021, all of you understand. I’ve successfully crawled out of the morass that was that year, hope y’all have done the same, and have already begun throwing myself into the garden more fully this year.

Which for my own accountability to myself means blogging about it, in the most happenstance and non-sequitur way possible.

Buckle up.

I put one 4×4 modular bed on top of a second 4×4 modular bed, and despite them being explicitly designed for this purpose I am feeing very proud of myself. I’m sure that’s a metaphor or something for continuing to find joy in small successes after the swamp of sadness that was the last nearly 2 years, but I had good reason to be skeptical that this would work.

Early last year I had two of my wooden 2×4 beds go all rotten on me. I replaced them with metal beds because at the time anything wooden was outrageously expensive. The 4×4 bed that I moved to become the top piece of my now double deep bed also happens to be the oldest surviving wooden raised bed in my garden. So if the two newer boys rotted out, I had little hope that I’d be able to salvage much out of the older one.

But past me had done future me a solid and nearly 6 years ago had sprung for the cedar 4×4 beds instead of the pine ones. And cedar is much more bug and weather resistant than pine. So I stacked a thing on another thing, and I’m very proud of myself. The newly cleared area between the out-of-control rosemary and the out-of-control blackberries will become a seating area and a more permanent home for the grill in Summer.

This has been a long winded but completely necessary way of saying I’m back baby.

And the garden wont know what hit it. I will though, as I’m trying to get better at labeling my seedlings.

Hello baby napa cabbages, welcome to 2022. We’re all counting on you.