Earlier this week, I came up with the bright idea of adding a design element of a trellis to a garden bed that is already lushly growing a sweet border crop of radishes, little red ones and daikon, a center section of mixed Asian greens, edging of onions, and little side planting of strawberries, oh yes, and an under planting of cilantro. My idea was to move an awkward piece of double hung piece of steel 4×4 fencing from one end of our garden to another. It weighs about 50 lbs. , judging by Pa’s and my estimate.` My thought was, well, if I move the fence over there, I will get it off of the lilies it is crushing, and also that bed might need a trellis for some plant , who knows? Pole beans maybe? Let me tell you, moving that fence over a fully planted garden, that I share with my neighbor, was challenging. Plus, my 11 month old puppy Beau James was in an off leash “stay back” command on the deck.
But “go ahead” I said to myself. Just the other day, I had used Pa’s industrial strength bolt cutters to bend approximately 75 little end pieces of that same kind of 4×4 fencing to make a nice edge string of bent iron loops to fit a bamboo pole into. ( see featured photo above ) The poky ends are scary and I wanted to make it safe for people to walk through. I also had hung a large sculptural piece of ironwork on our lovely steel arbor -made with remnants of fencing we brought home when Entiat used to have a metal recycling day, some iron mesh found at The Pines, angle iron and rebar. Both of those efforts were substantial, but gardening and dog rearing have made me stronger and more confident.
I managed to maneuver the fencing to the bed without destroying hardly a plant, but once to the destination, I needed to open the base of the two-sided trellis and stabilize is, which turned out to be impossible. I turned it around , leaned it over, and slowly worked all the angles using all the leverage tricks I knew. Nothing worked. I was stuck with a heavy weight leaning against me, and a delicate patch of young plants and vulnerable irrigation pipes beneath me.
Just as I was standing there stuck in one place, the meter reader guy drove up in our driveway. Naturally, Beau began his barking and I was sure that I would have to lay the fencing down and smash something to prevent an encounter between him and the guy. But miraculously, he stayed behind the “stay back line” (which is just an imaginary line drawn with a sweep of my hand as I say “stay back” ) ! I thought about asking the guy for a hand, but knew if he approached, Beau would lose it, and then I would have more to contend with than being stuck. So I just said “hi!”, and praised Beau for his self control.
Still stuck, I gave up, and realized my only option was to pick the fence up and move it out of the garden totally and decide later if and where to place it, next time with help from Pa, which I did.
This failed attempt brought to mind several maxims :
- Be very careful where you step and what you step on
- Trust your strength and stretch your limits, but take your time.
- When you lose control over a situation, stay calm, and hopefully others will too.
- Giving up on an idea is sometimes a good idea.
I came in for lunch and to read. This NYTimes article captured my attention, and perfectly expressed my sense of wonder and worry about out beautiful earth. It is somewhat unrelated to my experience, but then again, I feel that we need to listen carefully and intently to the wisdom of other living creatures and rely less and less on our human perspective.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/opinion/united-nations-extinction.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
Secrets from Granny 