I've strung together other how to guides on fish taping your wall and renovating your bath (when you have no clue what you're doing), so here's one more:

First, you need to start off with a massive dirt pile that your wife absolutely hates. Why? Because when you show the final before and after pics right next to each other, it looks that much better. Personally, the dirt you accumulate from building your own patio works best.

Secondly, you need to move the dirt around the yard. You must get creative ... very creative in where you try to put everything so you don't create another one that Christi your wife complains about in the future.

Next, go out and get a bunch of lumber. I chose pretreated 2x6's so that I don't have to worry about them rotting in the ground. However, pretreated lumber isn't that appealing on the eyes, so spend some money and stain it. I went with six 2x6x12's. I cut two of the boards in half and used them as the short sides so our garden is 12'x6'.

After borrowing Scott's milk crates and circular saw to cut the 4x4 (thanks again, by the way), I began building the bed upside down. I created the two ends first and then attached the 12' long sides.

Now this was the tough part. Christi and I had to carry the garden, fully assembled, from our garage to the back yard. When we went through the side fence, we had to turn it upright, and Christi could barely reach the top of it as we walked through. However, she pushed on as this is something she told me she wanted ever since I ripped up the yard to install a patio last year. When I built the patio, I bought a pickaxe that I thought I would never use again in my life. However, I dug out the 8" deep posts in about two minutes because I kept it around in the shed. You can use a shovel, but, man, this was so much easier.

Finally, we went out and bought all of the vegetables for the garden. Confused as to how this could cost so much more than just the price of lumber to construct the entire thing, I'm sure I'll be thankful later this summer as we're able to eat some fresh food whenever we want ... Stan included. When we had a garden in Omaha, we caught him all the time eating our tomatoes and jalepenos.

We also have some nice modern herb pots from C&B, so we are dedicating these to things that we'll want to easily pick whenever we're throwing a dinner together. Yes, the smaller one is a pot dedicated to growing mint for julep's on the 4th of July. We only have a month left, so hopefully we didn't plant these too late.

At the end of the day, I couldn't be happier as to how everything turned out. Making it even better? Having your wife even more pumped than you are. Now we just hope it survives without us when we head out in a week for my sister's wedding.