Fence: Two Point Oh!

So. 

I did it. 

I made the leap. 

Sue’s Fence is officially at Stage Two.

A quick recap of the previous stages, for those who have joined us late: 1.0: ELK; 1.1: Complain. 1.2: Look for local fence builder; fail. 1.3: Google “Fence/ELC/Elk/Seriously/I need a Fence” with zero results. 1.4: Turn down Gig Harbor company’s offer to build a fence all for the low, low cost of one of my kidneys. 1.5: Tree removal, which had many sub-phases, including branch clean up and buying a splitting maul. 1.6: Clearing a path through a tangle of brushy-brush, slash and—apparently—a gigantic black hornet’s nest. 1.7: Clearing the additional half acre and burning the debris, because I have generous friends who are intolerant of my half-assed ways and often save me from myself. 1.8: Test out loaner fence from WDF&W. 1.9: More complaining when loaner fence is loaned to someone else over the winter.

At phase 2.0, I stopped worrying about building The Perfect Fence –tall/strong, beautiful, yet affordable—and decided to do The Perfectly Adequate, Right Now Fence; an electric fence that doesn’t require a degree in engineering, a general contractor, or a tractor with a post-hole digger. (Full disclosure: I have a birthday coming up, if you *were* planning on getting me a tractor with a post-hole digger attachment, I wouldn’t return it. No worries-- just slap a bow on it. I’m not picky about color, either.)

Do it yourseld fence kit....

The fence I’m planning—all 615 feet of it—requires only the occasional 8’ T-post, LOTS of 3/8” fiberglass rods, a wheelbarrow full of post insulators—two kinds; 1,300+ feet of heavy duty “Sure Shock” polywire, the shocker unit, a copper grounding rod, misc. connector pieces, and some gate accessories.

 All these items are currently on their way to my house and will cost less than $700, all told. 

Including the peanut butter.

Straw Bale Gardening

Straw Bale Bible

If you’re planning to plant a SBG, now is the perfect time to start the process, don’t wait two weeks like I’m probably going to end up doing. Either way, please enjoy this helpful info I wrote previously:

I have a friend who has recently become enamored of straw bale gardening—you know, planting veggies on top of bales of straw instead of tilling up the soil and planting seeds in the ground, the cold, wet, muddy ground as God intended. And like all good, newly-converted enthusiasts she couldn’t wait to bring her subversive literature over to my house and attempt to convert me. Now, I’ve seen it done before and my reaction has always been WHY? It just looks, well—MESSY. Green plants sprouting out of shaggy, slowly decomposing bales of straw, not at all attractive to my eye. Then she handed me her propaganda, a book filled with various sized gardens and all sorts of cute configurations—there was even a straw bale garden in a shopping cart. The literature claimed amazing results with little effort—that’s sound good, right? And the small footprint such a garden would require could be easily and inexpensively fenced to keep those pesky elk at bay. I have to admit that at this point the entire idea was starting to sound pretty enticing. It seems rather straight forward to get started: buy some straw bales—straw, not hay. Hay seeds will sprout and, unless your goal is to grow a baleful of hay, nobody wants that. You will also need some potting mix or garden soil, soaker hose, and fertilizer. Along with seeds and/or seedlings that’s all you need. Before you know it one of my sons was interested in the whole process and started thumbing through her propaganda . . . and that’s all she wrote.

If You Build It

I know I talk a lot about building a fence. It probably seems like that’s all I do -- talk. And by talk, I—of course—mean complain. Incessantly.

Occasionally, I make some real progress; trees are cut down, hedges are trimmed back, bulldozers come in and doze stuff. Or, maybe they bull it, I’m not really sure. Anyway—things get flattened and smoothed, piled up and burned. White trash piles get solved. New trees are planted. Plans are hatched. Advice is sought. Fencing types are considered.

One of the best pieces of fence building advice came from an old-time, east-side, cattle-ranching, Garden-Gate reading fellow who has relocated in his golden years to Glenoma and called me up one day to share his wisdom with me.

The trick, he said, was to first build the fence in the animal’s head. In this case—the elk.

My rather vivid--and often vindictive--imagination immediately imagined setting fence posts into the (thick) skulls of marauding elk, but it turns out what he was actually advising was to “condition” the elk to respect the fence.

With electricity.

And peanut butter.

Because I am one choosy mother...

Give an elk a flower garden and she’ll be back for more. Build a fence around your flower bed and she’ll jump it or run through it or bulldoze it (cowdoze?) like it’s not even there. But put a little peanut butter on some tinfoil and attach it to your electric fence---well that’s a pretty powerful Pavlovian teaching tool if you ask me. A ba-gillion volts—right to the kisser! Or amps. Or hertz—I don’t know, I might not have paid attention in science class the day we talked about electricity. Anyway, the point is, ZAP! I have now built the fence in her head. She knows it’s there—hopefully she’ll tell all her friends.

The Off Season, Part 2: Sue Throws a Rigging Fit

Last time, I was telling you of my mis-adventures in gardening—specifically as they relate to mowing and my failure to PLAN AHEAD. Full confession? I might have thrown what used to be known as a “rigging fit.”

 On or about the third tablespoon of gas in the half-tablespoon tank of my push-mower—did I mention I was pouring from a five-gallon can? A full five-gallon can? --and/or the 482 time I’d had to restart my grass-choked mower, my inner logger came out; I muttered and stomped around, red-faced and steaming, smoke boiling from my ears. I kicked rocks. I kicked the ground, and I confess, Gentle Reader, that if I had had a lunch bucket I would have pitched it from the landing while turning the air blue with my heart-felt, fervent utterances. And I didn’t even HAVE a landing! No matter! Get me a lunch bucket and I will fling it! Oh, that was your lunch bucket? No matter! I will fling all the buckets! All, I say! 

By the time property values in my neighborhood had dropped significantly, and small children had been ushered safely indoors---and I was out of lunch buckets-- I finally calmed down. Four full years and five lawn mowing seasons have come and gone since that awful day in January and I can hardly blame Shane’s absence for my own inability to step up to the plate this season and problem solve the problem by—oh, I don’t know—PREVENTING IT.

That’s on me and I need to own it. And I probably need to replace the lunch buckets...what else? Apologize to the neighbors, pay for some pediatric ear-wash, make sure none of my “rigging fit” ended up on YouTube... I’m not exactly sure what the moral of my cautionary tale is—I only know that after I calmed down I went into the garage and my riding mower fired right up. 

Seriously. 

Look at me, sitting down, mowing grass.
What a concept!

It did.

Make of that what you will. I made hay while the sun shone.

The OFF Season

I like to think that gardening comes with multiple seasons: Pre-Season, The Gardening Season, Post Season, and The Off Season. In Pre-Season you take all the necessary steps for a successful garden: you plan, and dream, and look at seed catalogs. You think about what didn’t work out as well as you’d hoped and strategize ways to counteract the challenges. You buy seed and gas and fertilizer and wait for that long-awaited day of sunshine, so you can rush out and commence gardening.

Gardening Season has arrived! You plant plants! You buy more plants! You plant those! You mow the green-green grass, a favorite beverage in the cup holder! The sun shines, birds sing along with the musical metronome of the sprinkler, the air is sweet—you might even BBQ later!  Gardening Season is the Best Season!

In the Post-Season, you reflect on your harvest, tally your success and clean up your gardens. You tuck gardens in for winter, plant any bulbs you want to greet you next spring, dig up any dahlias or begonias you want to winter-over, put away hoses and tools. At some point, many people will service their lawn mowers. Or so I’ve heard. Because somewhere, in between the Post-Season and Pre-Season, is the Off Season. And that’s where I tend to be.

For me, there seems only to be two seasons: Gardening and Not Gardening and nary a thought of what I might do during the latter to make the former possible. It’s only when April rolls around and the sun comes out and I realize my grass is taller than my cats do I wonder if I have any gas in the mower...and something about an oil change, was it? Perhaps battery? Spark plug? Tune-up? So, in between rain showers, I listen to all the other mowers in my neighborhood fire up and as they begin to perfume the air with the scent of freshly mown grass, I go out and attempt to start my riding lawn mower. 

SPOILER ALERT: It doesn’t start. Even after days of being on the battery charger. I start the push mower. I begin to mow. SPOILER ALERT: Riding mower vs. Push Mower. 42” cutting deck vs. 24”; sitting down/cupholder vs. standing up/no cupholder, PUSHING; a gas tank that holds a GALLON PLUS of gas vs. a tank that holds approximately half a tablespoon. But I’m mowing!

SPOILER ALERT: my happy thoughts do not last.