I Love To Go A Gardening
Growing Our Life in Northern Michigan
Our Garden Stockade
Miracle of miracles, it actually began to rain Friday night and it continued into Saturday. Just before 6 am on Saturday morning, I heard thunder and thought, “Well, no sense getting up now since I’m not going to let the chickens out of the coop when it’s storming,” and I went back to sleep. EJ, however, got out of bed when he heard the storm. He said it rained very hard. Most of the day we had periods of steady rain. Rain is good, especially with the dry summer we’ve had. It was a good day to be cozy.
We are also getting some rain this (Sunday) evening, and we could get severe storms through the night and into tomorrow. However, today was sunny. We heard it was going to get hot and humid later and we had a lot to do so after the coffee pot was emptied, we went out to work on the garden fence while the day was still cool. Later, when the day began to warm up, we shut the windows and turned on the air conditioning so we could take breaks in the cool house.
Putting up the fence was much easier with both of us working–although once the fence wrapped around me and trapped me. Since I was in position to hold the fence, I told EJ to just continue his hammering. After a couple whacks of his hammer, he helped me get untrapped. Another time I happened to look down and was surprised to see blood dripping down my hand and onto my shirt. I don’t know exactly how I cut my hand, although I’m sure the fence must have cut me. I didn’t even feel it. EJ asked if I wanted to go get a band-aid, but I just wrapped my finger in a Kleenex from my pocket and told him that we could keep going. It was really just a small cut. I have learned a lot from EJ–he gets cuts sometimes and just wraps it up and keeps working. And he always works with his painful back.
Aside from those minor problems, things went well. I held up the fence and stretched it while EJ hammered the staples in. The hardest part was that the sand didn’t hold the posts very well so they tilted a bit when EJ hammered them. I used my level to straighten them and we stomped the ground around them. It took us about two hours to put up the fence. The new part of the garden doubles the size of the garden, and then some. Our whole back yard is now our garden and chicken coop.
Our soil is sandy and not great for growing, which is the major reason we have raised garden beds–that and it’s easier on our backs to weed raised beds. We would like to grow corn and asparagus next year and we think they would be best just planted in the ground, so we are thinking that next Spring we might have some good soil delivered. Because of this, we moved the 10-foot long section of dog kennel further down the fence and will make it into a gate. That way the delivery truck can just back up and dump it in the garden.
JJ called his Dad just before we finished putting up the last section of fence. So while EJ talked to him, I did some little one-person jobs. I removed the shorter fence dividing the old and new sections of the garden and pulled up the t-posts. I was pleasantly surprised that we still have most of the second roll of fencing left. We will use the t-posts and leftover fencing in a fence to protect our fruit trees from the deer over the winter.
Next I turned the old dog house that’s in the garden. It was facing into the old garden, but I turned so it’s easily accessible from both parts of the garden. I figure that if we let the chickens into the garden, they can run into the dog house if a predator threatens them. Or they can lay eggs in it. Whatever. The dog house in the garden and the one in the coop were both left here by the previous owners. They are very well-built and very heavy. I couldn’t move the dog house until I had removed the roof to lighten it. After EJ finished talking to JJ, he helped me put the heavy roof back on.
We decided to leave the burning barrel in the garden for now. (Yes, we can burn papers here.) We’d prefer not to have the barrel there, but we don’t know where to put it right now. It needs to be not too close to the house, and not too close to the forest, and we don’t want it in the front yard because we don’t want to ruin the beautiful view. Our back yard has our garden stockade while our front yard has the view. So we have to think about where to put the barrel.
We had to replace the short posts holding the small gate with the taller posts. After we got all the fencing up, we put the wire garden gate back on using staples for hinges. The gate is shorter than the posts and EJ was concerned that the deer could easier jump it. He was thinking he might have to construct a taller gate. But then we decided to just put a board across the gate posts. Doing this means we wouldn’t have to spend time or effort making a taller gate, and the deer wouldn’t have enough space over the gate and I doubt they could jump over the “doorway.” EJ hammered it in place. He says he is going to cut off the top of the left post so they are even.
We made a quick trip to the hardware store to get some hinges for the dog kennel gate. We took Hannah Joy with us because she enjoys car rides and hasn’t had one for a while. When we got back home, EJ worked on that gate for a while. The hardware store didn’t have everything he needed so he wasn’t able to get it all finished. He temporarily wired the gate to the posts until he can get what he needs.
We worked together from about 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. We were very tired and crippled by the time we called it quits, but we are very satisfied with all we accomplished today.
Our next big project is to get gravel for the driveway.
I Love To Go A Gardening 
You must have all the strength back after your injury – that is good. We have severe weather coming in Tuesday or Wednesday to break the heat – I am so done with this Summer.
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I have a slight stiffness in my fingers, and I don’t think my hand is quite as strong as the other, but other than that my hand feels good. Most of the time I almost forget I broke it!
We could get severe weather tonight and, I think, maybe tomorrow. It’s very humid out.
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This humidity is a killer and I will be glad for Fall, just like you – we’ve decided before Fall is our favorite season. That’s good you’ve recovered so well and does the humid or rainy weather bother it? I hope we all stay safe in this severe weather. Sigh.
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We had a lot of severe storms around us last night. I’ve heard that trees are down and a lot of people lost their power. I didn’t see any trees down in our Enchanted Forest and we didn’t lose our power, which I’m thankful for. We are expecting more storms tonight. I hope you all are staying damage-free downstate.
I was thinking today as I walked down to get our mail that it was feeling slightly more like autumn and slightly less than summer. I do enjoy the beauty of autumn. My birthday is in early October and we always take a drive through the beautiful country side as my gift. I’m trying to decided which direction to go in. Maybe to some lighthouses in the UP?
I don’t notice a significant increase in the stiffness in my hand during humid, rainy weather. Its always slightly stiff, but nothing that hinders me.
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I hear there are strong thunderstorms tonight but I don’t know how close to you – we won’t have anything tonight (as far as I can tell), but if we have anything it is tomorrow. We get the nicer weather back this Thursday and Friday. Last week those three days were just gorgeous and very Fall-like. I thought I needed long sleeves the one morning I went out.
I have booked a little lighthouse tour for next Sunday the 9th … it is a historical lighthouse on Grosse Ile. I hope it does not rain as rain has cancelled several events this Summer already and I am frugal, so not happy about that as I had to prepay for it. This lighthouse is only 40 feet tall so not too big, but they only have a tour one day a year and the rest of the time the lighthouse remains closed. I hope it is not full of spiders since no one goes in there – OMG, just had that awful thought.
My mom used to say she could tell when it was going to rain from the stiffness in her joints from her arthritis.
Stay safe in these storms TJ!
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We had severe storms tonight–even a tornado or two not to far away. I just finished writing about it. It’s quiet now, but I think more rain is on the way…
I hope you can go to your lighthouse tour. We love lighthouses–and Michigan has a LOT of them.
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It will be my first lighthouse for me – this weather is too erratic right now and I’ll really be glad for Fall to arrive. Stay safe TJ. I am going to shut down and I think we are okay tonight – at least I hope so.
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