woofie said:Welcome, Steve! What kind of things are you growing there in Colorado?
Well, to be honest witcha, I have always loved gardening perennials till I sold my perfect, beautifully gardened first home and moved to an acre lot with a huge plain backyard. Been driving me nuts..I so have many plans for it because it is so plain, but the cost of a 6' tall stucco wall around it, as well as a slow down in my business, has put a damper on my landscaping funds the last few years. It's going to be a fun, challenging design project to bring this yard to life.
I started a perennial garden a couple of years ago and was going to continue to add to it making the whole area, around the tree, all the way to the corner of the wall a garden. It doesn't look like much now, but it my first step to just get some color in the yard.
While winterizing the grass, I got a bright idea this last fall to put raised beds in the corner, on the other side of the tree, and have my hand at growing veggies...Veggies??? Huh, not since I was a kid...(remembering the days of my childhood gardening and canning with my parents and thinking how fun it would be to garden with my 10 y/o daughter who would dig the responsibility as well as learning how to garden, can and eat what we grow) hence, the researcher side of me finding the largest wealth of gardening info on the web...lurking, quietly taking notes and gathering information for my new gardening project. This weekend, class begins in germination 101 for her and I being that we will probably be snowed in.
I own a metal fabrication shop that specializes in CNC plasma cutting, so when I thought of the idea, I thought I would design my raised bed corners out of steel. So, I went to the shop and designed my corners to lock the lumber into the corners with a center bolt and be completely adjustable for wood from 2" to 4" in width with a decorative corner cap to bolt the top corners solid.
The first set I cut had sunflowers with dragon flies for the top corner caps pattern. The day I finished them I had a walk in customer come in for a repair job and when he saw them...he had to have a set, but he wanted them with just the dragon flies. So, I re-vamped my original design to lightening them up and made some other tweeks. He picked them up in the next couple days. The following day another guy came in, saw the sunflower set on my floor and bought the set right then and there as a Christmas gift...he wasn't going to take no for an answer though I tried...
So for fun I drew up some more patterns for options and am planning on trying to sell a few of these this spring to fund my landscaping and gardening projects.
I have always loved gardening, but now I have the ability to build garden decor and ornaments and love adding cut steel to my yard...maybe I should make an all steel garden...wouldn't that be kewl. Here's some stuff I have done for my yard for now with much more to be added.
If you would like to see more of what I do with steel visit my facebook page at
https://www.facebook.com/Metal....
And thanks for the Nice Welcome...I have really enjoyed this site from the side lines, and plan on being an active part with my project yard.
Steve
another Rocky Mountain High Member Welcome 
Great work! 
