April 20, 2013 - installing a new fence

A light snow covered the ground in the garden on the morning of April 20. The presence of bluebells was one of the few signs that it was spring. Though cold, it was clear, dry, and sunny. It was a good day for an infrastructure project.

A two-man crew from Advanced Fence and Gate arrived at the garden a little after 9:00 AM and started dismantling the decrepit cedar fence that ran along the southern side of the garden property. Reciprocating saws and electric drills made short work of the demolition.

sawing through the wood fence

John and I took wooden fence panels as they came down and stacked them in the garden. John has plans for new compost bins that will make use of wood that we salvage from the fence.

John takes away a fence panel

salvaging 2X4s from a fence panel

removing the last wooden pole

the new metal fence

the view of the new fence from the alley

wood panels ready for salvage

After removing the fence panels and cutting out the support poles, the crew installed a 6 foot galvanized steel chain-link fence. Installation of the new fence took less time than did the removal of the wooden fence--probably because John and I weren't in the way.

There's still the matter of the leaning gate and the washout at the eastern end of the garden. That will be our next large project.

Self Starters

This early in the season we don't have a water hook-up to the city and thus rely exclusively on our rain barrels.  Until these seemingly endless April showers kicked in, this giant ice block is all we had to work with.  Great if you're looking to make a sculpture of a man-eating sea horse, but not so much for watering sprouts.  Empty your rain barrels before winter folks!  Lesson learned.

Evelyn demonstrates Ginkgo's new wood chipper.

Despite the lack of water, we are chipper (ba-dum-ching) and our self-starting perrenials have launched the season!

On a side note: this photo will probably be the last of our wooden south facing fence... I can't think of a better photo to show why we are getting a new fence.

Take the rhubarb for example.  By their own will-power these weird alien protrusions begin freaking out volunteers  each spring.  While they currently look like sickly crumpled viscera, soon they will look like pie.  And you wonder why we volunteer.

And without any coaxing we are surprised by the half inch purple nub of an asparagus spear.  This perennial won't yield significant harvests for another couple of years, but it is encouraging to see that it survived year one.

And remember those turnips that never grew last year?  They were in the ground waiting for us early this spring.  The one that I took home was too squishy to eat, but that doesn't make their triumph less remarkable.

While we all look forward to tomatoes that a grocery store could not feasibly stock or finger-staining berries that taste better because you left a little skin in the bramble, spring is brought to us by self starters.  While we fill beds with seeds and transplants, the early risers give us something to look at.  And did I mention, there will be pie.

Frost tolerant volunteers plant potatoes.

schwinnbuster

The last couple of work days have seemed slightly Sisyphean, with a lot of moving around of heavy things that we suspect will just have to be moved around again later. Two weekends back, we reconfigured our rain barrels: we elevated one on an additional level of cinder block supports to increase the pressure at the spigot and daisy-chained it to the second. Because our downspout was a little short, we rigged an extending sluice using a board and rope; we’re not sure how this will work.

We should have increased our use of rainwater long ago, solely because conserving resources was the right thing to do. It took a notice that the City plans to charge non-profits for their use of municipal water to provide a final incentive. We may purchase additional barrels and rig up a new gutter to collect even more rainwater from the roof of the garden shed.

Last week, we were joined by the Hardest Working Volunteers in Show Business—folks who all seemed to be in the local comedy and screenwriting scene, and who had no qualms with tearing into substantial tasks like digging out the back fence and turning over the contents of our compost bins.

At the request of our neighbors in Buena Park, we cleared a clogged storm drain in the front area. John found a twenty-dollar bill at the bottom of the pile of reeking muck; he immediately promised to spend the filthy lucre on refreshments next week.

We finished with the annual Bringing Out of Everything From the Garden Shed, followed by the annual Putting Everything Back into the Garden Shed, Only in a Slightly Different Configuration. Because we were in the middle of installing new shelves, we’ll have to reshuffle everything later.

Next weekend will feature more hauling about. We have scheduled a delivery of wood chips that we’ll spread throughout the garden to keep weeds down. We are fortunate in that the front garden will offer aromatic respite from our labors: when we need a break, we can sit on a bench and bask in the perfumed refulgence of our flowering trees and bushes. It’s as good as finding a schwinnbuster in the gutter.

good neighbors fix bad fences

In late March, I visited the garden after an absence of a few weeks to see how it had weathered the end of winter. In addition to stray bits of windblown trash and the desiccated stalks of last season’s kale plants, I discovered a plastic bin full of branches that we had left uncovered over the winter. The malodorous ferment of snowmelt and rotting vegetation inside was a pungent reminder of the need to store buckets upside down at the end of autumn.
 

not the branch water I prefer

Usually, a few fetid buckets of sludgy compost are the worst of what awaits me in spring. This year, though, I found that a section of the garden fence had collapsed over the winter, probably as the result of the heavy snowfalls that we experienced in January. The extent of the damage to the fence was not apparent until the snow melted; when it finally receded, the snow revealed a serious problem. A six-foot section had ripped away from its supporting posts and completely separated from the rest of the fence. Only the gate to the neighboring property’s fence protected our garden from someone being able to walk in from the alley.

fallen fence section

After volleys of emails, we found someone to help. Chris Salus, the brother of Eric Salus, one of Ginkgo’s founders, agreed to look at the fence and see what he could do. Chris wound up fixing the entire thing himself over the next couple of weeks, working during on his days off from his job as a fireman.

repairs after first week

Chris told us that the fence posts, constructed of cedar instead of pine, had rotted; what’s more, they had not been set in concrete. Chris set the posts in concrete and reattached the fence section with longer screws.

repaired fence

Thanks to Chris’s efforts, our fence is now whole again. We can turn our focus to the 2011 growing season.