Now, it's a different story. Winding up out of pep at the bottom of the big hill offers two alternatives. I can lie down and wait for Search and Rescue to come for me. Or I can stop for small rests and press on and reach my house.
Recently, I had dinner around six. I knew that was a mistake, because I can't do much on a full stomach. However, if I wait until I've put the hens and my garden tools away, it winds up being 9:15 when I get back inside, with dinner at 10.
My plan was to merely shovel some compost and carry it to where I was planting irises I dug up the day before. Compost is lighter than dirt and it was dry, besides.
Here I should mention the fence I pulled up the day before. I wanted to enlarge the whole garden area to include the hillside part. Why I wanted to do that was the soil under the fence was some of the best, going to waste by growing giant clumps of grass. First, I'd unhooked the fencing from the posts. Then I rocked the fence posts back and forth until I could, with some effort, pull them out of the ground. They didn't want to go. They had been there since I put that fence in ten years ago. The materials came from the former owners' sloppy fences that I pulled up.
Apparently, ten years is how long it took me to forget how much work it is to move fences. I yanked the fencing out of the grass and rolled it up as seen in the illustration above. One day, I would do the job right, I'd told myself, and continue the fence down the hillside. There was a small amount of chain link fencing down behind the chicken coop.
Mulch is the way to keep from endless weeding. I love mulch. The problem with chickens searching for bugs is they scratch up any mulch. So, to keep the chickens out of the hillside plantings, I'd made a little flimsy green plastic-coated chicken wire fence held by bamboo reeds, weak ones.
Beau used to lie on the grassy pathway I kept mowed above that bed. With the 3 ft. fence, I put up another taller bit to discourage him from hopping over it there. Yesterday, when he showed up beside me in the garden, I realized this was going to be a bigger problem than I thought. Strangely, I remembered Elizabeth Taylor in Elephant Walk.
Beau had apparently, through the gateway I'd opened, seen a whole new area of lovely soil to dig up to lie in. He discovered how easily he could push the rickety fence over.
I was confronted with the immediacy of the fence situation. Whining about my full tummy, I went down to where some of the extra fence posts were leaning in a jumble with some sapling trees behind an outbuilding. Using them as ski poles, I came up the hill to the fence site. It was when I fetched the heavy post pounder that I wanted to give up on all that folly. I am a little over five feet tall. The post pounder raised overhead poses a threat of driving me into the ground like a stake.
After setting a couple of posts, I had to try and figure out the parts of the fencing that had formed new bonds that kept it from unrolling. Sitting in the damp grass, I was hot and sweaty, not helped by a largish Coon Hound breathing down my neck. That was day three of the Bright Idea.
Of course, this project, already not suited for heat, was destined to get even bigger. I needed more of the shorter fence posts. Although I had plenty of the other old taller rusted ones, I wanted some semblance of uniformity.
I see now that that was the tipping point.
A few weeks ago, while thinning the little green apples on a ladder, I decided the year had arrived to remove the fence surrounding the apple tree. I put it there years ago to keep the stray cows from destroying the young tree.While the ground was dry and hard, I had an excuse to wait. Now, I saw that the shorter fence posts I needed, also the chain link fencing, were at hand.
The next problem was the steep hillside with the apple tree had overgrown with grass and poison ivy. After pruning down some tree seedlings, I got on Rosie the Ride-On and scared myself mowing it.
At that juncture, I came up with a new strategy for the fence completion. The work would have to be done in very small steps. Camelot Rules were I could not start before eight in the evening. Everything is in shade then and I would only be able to do a limited amount before dark.
Several days of extreme heat, 99 degrees with high humidity, made removing the fence seem like a really foolhardy idea. So when I was in the farm store buying scratch grains, I got three new posts. However, when I got home, I realized I'd gotten taller posts.
"Uniformity be damned," I muttered, not wanting to take them for exchange.
The next morning, after a good rain in the night, I saw I really only needed one of the posts to reach the corner post and some tacky metal temporary fencing leading back uphill. Before breakfast, I went up to the apple tree and easily pulled one post out. As long as I had the fence tool, I got the rest of the posts and pulled up the fence.
Putting the one tall post back in the post pile, I noticed I did have three more of those short posts. Oh well, no harm done, because I really wanted to get rid of that fence.
This time, I avoided those dangerous liaisons the fence was prone to form by not rolling it up. Also, since I have this much fence and quite enough short poles, I'll go ahead and continue the fence as far as I can. I'll only have to pull up the temporary posts and other fencing and . . . .
