It’s the tail end of the three-day Independence Day weekend here. I’ve spent it in various ways.

Reading lots for school about metadata and creating standards for digital library architecture. I find it all (mostly) interesting and will probably share some of the metadata stuff this week.

Building a new garden bed in the backyard. Since we had a dog we never really did much with the backyard. But now that our dear Godzilla has gone to the great dog park in the sky, our fence along one side of the yard that was falling down because the who-knows-how-old fence posts were rotting was no longer needed. We decided to build a garden bed with a trellis, a climbing rose, and clematis along part of the fence line and then along the rest we will eventually make a semi-formal garden shrub and flower border. So my Bookman, who had already taken down the fence and most of the fence posts, and I spent time building this:

garden trellis

We salvaged a few fence posts and the trellis fencing to make what will eventually be a pretty garden spot. The climbing rose in the center is William Baffin. The clematis on the left is an alpine clematis called Constance that will bloom in spring. The clematis on the right is a jackmanii superba and will be blooming this time next year (I hope). The bird bath is copper and has a lily pad and a turtle in it. On the ground beneath is a cute fat chickadee like bird ornament. And the little round stepping stone was made from the leftover concrete we used to set the posts. As you can see we aren’t quite finished. We need to put down mulch and we ran out of the edging we were using on the trellis. We are very proud of ourselves since we managed to set the posts straight and at the same height (the shorter end posts we might eventually saw down a bit and put a fancy topper on but since we only have a hand saw this might be something we never end up doing) and line up and attach the trellis pieces. Now the plants just have to climb. Climb plants, climb!

Next year at the big spring garden sale we’ll be getting some perennials to add to the bed. This fall I think we’ll have to plant some tulips and other spring bulbs there too.

Since I had the camera out, Waldo was looking cute rolling around on my desk. Here is an action shot of him in the process of rolling off the desk:

action waldo

And here he is looking cute on the desk chair, pretending that he meant to be on the chair all along:

cute Waldo

Dickens was sleeping under the furniture somewhere and missed out on the photo opportunity.

And one more thing I did this weekend: I finished Rebecca. More on that tomorrow.