fence-mending

Robert Frost said "Good fences make good neighbors."

I only wish it were so. Good fences don't keep them off your property or keep them from sneaking around getting your morels without ever offering you any.

Because the people on the other side of this fence have three horses and very little pasture for them to graze, the horses, if left to their own devices, will stretch over the fence on the property line to graze our grass. I wouldn't mind sharing the grass, but they tear down the fence to the point that, if we didn't do something, there would BE no fence left. And our not-so-good neighbor doesn't lift a hand to help fix it.

So we put a strand of electrified wire on our side of the fence. If the horses try reaching over or through the strands of barbed wire, they'll get a harmless shock. Trouble is, electric fence doesn't work if weeds grow up and touch it. So in the above picture, you see Cliff weed-eating at the fence-line.


Good fences don't hide the good neighbor's weeds and junk. These healthy Norway Spruce trees will, though; they just have to grow a little. We bought twenty-five of them from some little obscure nursery, and they've grown like crazy. I was going to order more from the same source, but they were sold out by then. So I ordered twenty-five of them from Autumn Ridge Nursery.

They arrived brown, and once planted, turned even browner. Yeah, they're dead. Autumn Ridge is sending us replacements this fall. I can only hope those are alive.

I saw this turkey out back of the house this morning. I sure enjoy living out behind the barn.