Mariposa Center Garden fence half done

Today Emily and I met at the Mariposa Center Garden to try to set up a fence to protect it from life on the street. It’s a temporary fence – when the plants grow up we’ll remove it.

The nice guys at Center Hardware donated the materials: we had 100 feet of 12 gauge fence and 10 U-posts. They loaned us some good wire cutters, and I brought along a 9 pound hammer, pliers, tying wire and gloves. Before Emily arrived, the nice guys also sort of stood around and assessed puny-looking me in my nice office clothes, my collection of somewhat rusty tools, and, I think, felt a bit sorry for me. Which I thought was pretty reasonable actually, as I was suddenly feeling under-qualified for the job!

So Emily arrived and we pounded in the U-posts. I had wanted T-posts which are a lot more rigid, but they weren’t available. So the pounding was a bit of a pain with the flimsier posts and the rocky dirt. Then we cut a 50’ length of the fencing and attached it to the existing fence at one end, and pulled it along the posts set down the strip, wiring it to the posts as we went. We placed it inside the strip of Dietes plants, and outside the other plants – just to hide the fence a bit. The fence looked a bit crooked and floppy, so we added another post to tighten it up, which sort of worked a bit. We ran out of time and had to go back to work, but the first half of the fencing is done and looks pretty good!

We had one angry (deranged?) person tell me we shouldn’t be doing this, and that he’d kill the plants, and about eight delighted, happy people who stopped to tell us how great our efforts were. So on the whole, I think the community is behind us ;) We won’t be winning any prizes for tight, ruler-straight fence building but hey – we got the job done and I think it’ll work.

Later this week we need to do the other half of the fencing, attach signs to the back fence telling people about the garden, and water the strip. Anyone up for it?