The Peonies are in full bloom, and that means summer is coming, faster than I am ready for. The air smells like floral perfume, it is green everywhere, and the garden…is still not done.
But this weekend was a marathon of effort, and it will be finished and planted in a week. We started with an auger rental. Last year, we dug post holes for the temporary garden with a manual post digger, and between rocks and time, barely were able to sink the posts deep enough to stay up. This year we brought in the heavy machinery.
It still required 2 guys to help us in order to get all the post holes dug. Thankfully my ex and Melissa’s husband were willing and more than able.
They also helped us measure, and remeasure to ensure we were going to be level and the posts would go in evenly. We never would have gotten as far as we did without them, especially when we hit a buried stone wall, halfway through augering holes.
Yesterday, Melissa and I continued our assembly line prefab and build approach, and cranked out 5 sections in the ground before we had to stop for the day.
We chose a method of 8′ garden sections made out of 1″x5″ pre-primed pine boards, flanked by the big splurge of 8′ cedar posts. Each section is pre-assembled and then attached, with chicken wire stapled on. Melissa and I worked as a team to prefabricate, level each post and get it installed while the smallish people did other, equally important things:
In the end, we built a full side and part of the front and back of the garden. We got faster as the day went on, it stayed level, which is an achievement in and of itself, and by the end of the day, we had gotten pretty darn good at fencing. I can’t say it’s a skill we’ll have much use for going forward, but it’s a good skill to have.
Little House on the Fairy Hill 