In this Dueling DIY garden challenge, I am on fire. Literally.

These were my jeans at the end of Saturday.

And this was the back of my neck at the end of the weekend. Ow-ee.

If you’re new to this Dueling DIY series, Sarah in Illinois and I are undertaking some friendly competition to help us get our gardens in shape this spring. You can check out all of the previous posts here.

Now, if you look again at that top picture and squint through the smoke, you might notice that the fire is some ways away from the garden itself–that big round thing with the fence around it.

Blame it on my pyromaniac tendencies. Blame it on the other outdoor task on my 2016 Home Goals list–general property cleanup. Blame it on the first nice weather of the year. I got a little bit distracted over the weekend.

I cleared a stack of about a dozen incredibly heavy metal siding panels that had been hiding in the weeds on the south side of the garden.

Then I cleared the weeds themselves–using my preferred method of fire.

I cleared a very large pile of lumber at the edge of our centre field–and lit some of the really punky stuff on fire. (I might have a problem).

I cleared a stack of old fence posts beside the driveshed.

I’ve moved these fence posts once before, picking them up from where they were scattered around the property and tucking them behind the driveshed. I had to remind myself a couple of times that I had moved them before, and I could move them again.

These things were heavy. The very last one was the girth and almost the length of a telephone pole–not even close to a fence post. Example 8,694 of why I don’t need a gym membership.

But I digress. All of these clearing tasks do actually have something to do with the vegetable garden.

The fence posts are going to become the “curbs” around the outside of the garden and the raised beds.

Some of the lumber from the field is going to be trellises for the tomatoes and stakes to hold the curbs in place.

The metal T-posts that were mixed in with the lumber pile are going to be the trellises for the raspberries.

So my big accomplishment in this Dueling DIY is that I have amassed all of my materials. A whole lot of materials.

My other accomplishments are on the non-heavy lifting side: I ordered seed potatoes and grape vines, and we’ve started some watermelon, tomato and pepper seeds inside.

Here’s my original to-do list that I shared last week. I can cross just one thing off.

• Hang the gate
• Edge the garden
• Build raised beds around the perimeter
• Build trellises for the raspberries, tomatoes and squashes
• Start a few seeds indoors
• Till in the ash, straw and manure currently spread over the garden

But here’s how I’d calculate my scorecard so far:

• I cleared the weeds from a space roughly equal to the size of the garden. Maybe this means fewer weeds to go to seed and infiltrate the garden itself.
• I am prepped–and stocked–in the garden materials department.
• I moved a telephone pole all by myself–in fact the equivalent of several telephone poles if you put all of those fence posts together.
• And I lit myself on fire.

Beat that Sarah.

Thanks to everyone who shared their garden/spring to-do lists last week. Please share your progress. How is your spring project coming? Are there any pyromaniacs out there? Who else gets distracted from the primary project? What are you working on in your garden?