Let the digging begin

We broke ground on a beautiful, sunny Saturday afternoon. Our landlord had allowed us to use the random assortment of spades and hoes that he has in the basement. So we armed ourselves with our tools, along with a fancy pair of shears we had purchased the day before, and began hacking away at the shrubs and plants while clearing away the dirt . One change to the initial plan- instead of creating two separate 4'x6' sections, we decided it would be easier to just make these two sections into one giant section. We mostly decided this because the other section in which we had planned the garden has an enormous shrub in it with thick branches that our shears would not have been able to handle so well. Plus, it ended up begin easier to remove all the dirt and add the new soil into one giant section, versus doing it in two sections. So, after several hours, we were able to haul away all the old dirt and plants, bushes and weeds. By "haul away" I really mean, we threw all of this stuff into a bunch of heavy duty garbage bags which are now sporadically lying across our backyard, as these bags, once filled with dirt, proved to be unbelievably heavy and difficult to maneuver. We're still trying to figure out what to do with said bags...more to come on that. But for now, back to the garden!

1. We dug into the ground about 6-8" deep.
2. Next we leveled off the ground with our hoes.
3. We laid the landscape fabric over the dirt.
4. We dumped our rocks evenly throughout the pit and over the landscape fabric.
5. Finally we emptied a combination of potting soil and compost over the rocks and spread it around. Our calculations of how much soil we needed were a bit off, we never claimed to be math experts here, because we have a few extra bags, but we figured the dirt may settle a bit and we'll need this extra dirt at that point. We'll see.
6. Voila! A beautiful raised-bed garden ready to go!