Today couldn’t have been more different from last weekend (gallery now up folks…) – instead of a leisurely lunch at Lara’s Mum’s house followed by more food at a Greenwich Village Microbrewery, we’ve been putting up a fence around the veggie garden so we can make sure it’s us who eat the things I grow, rather than the hens!!!
It started off reasonably well, we got the gate-posts in and the gate hung no problem. Unlike David I actually love doing this sort of thing. Give me a Black and Decker tool of any sort and I’m like a pig in muck. There is something about building stuff that gives me huge satisfaction.
We are making a fenced in area about 36’ x 24’ around my six raised beds that provide us with much of our fresh food each summer. David was getting pretty grumpy with me because when I pulled the garden back from a wilderness about ten years ago, I used the Bob Flowerdew (a hippy organic gardener in the UK) method of keeping down the weeds. I used the old carpets from the house, pile side down, covered in gravel as a weed suppressant. It works really well on all the paths and around the fruit trees.
Of course it’s not so hot when you want to put metposts in.
Could we get through the stuff? Like hell we could! We were not helped by the fact that we’ve got loads of fantastic tools but can’t find any of them in that great tool-gobbling hole that is our garage. We couldn’t locate a single Stanley knife (despite owning at least three between us). The cordless screwdriver and drill were both uncharged (and the place we were working is out of reach of our longest power cables by some distance). Grrrr – this really winds me up. My Dad has always taught me to buy the best tools you can afford – it makes the jobs easier. He’s right, if only you can find the Bl**dy things.
We ended up resorting to this little red handled craft knife of David’s – it was blunt in a few cuts.
Did we finish this job that we thought would take half a day or so? Did we heckers like (as my Dad would say). We got almost to the end of one of the sides of the enclosure and dug a hole for the next metpost only to hit concrete about 8-9” below the soil. Not just a small bit, a bit so big and heavy that even with both of us with spades underneath it we couldn’t shift it.
We resorted to brute force at this stage (well as brutal as a 5’10” skinny guy and a 5’5” girl can muster). We got the sledgehammer and wellied it. I started – goggles on and pounding away. David took over and had another go. I had a go again. We made almost no impression on this huge thing in the soil. It was an old washing line post and had to carry the weight not just of the line but the washing too. It was enormous. After about half an hour of wellying it, we had to concede defeat. We agreed that we’d be better off hiring a Kanga next weekend and breaking it up.
When we eventually gave up it was 6.30pm and we were both exhausted – my back is aching like mad as I sit here typing.
The really annoying thing? We debated for ages about where to put the fence and this option was one of about 4-5 possibilities. Any of the others would have missed the bl**dy thing!
A year ago today - my most popular ever photo!
