The day after we discovered that the Island King's chicken wire fence wasn't going to work he came home from the store and said "I found our fence. It's on the side of the road and we've got to go and get it now before someone else does."
I didn't even ask what kind of fence he'd found because anything was going to be better than the chicken wire disaster so I hopped in the truck with him and off we went.
Just around the corner from us a man is putting in a new privacy fence and his old one was stacked out by the road.
"We're going to build a wooden fence and everything we need is right here" the Island King tells me.
So we hauled the wood home and stacked it in the back yard.
It had to be completely dismantled so he could put it back together the way we needed it but there was definitely enough wood to build the fence and even some left over to repair some broken pickets on our big fence.
The Oldest Island Boy was all over this, wanting to pull the nails out and get the boards ready.
Do all 11 year old boys like to tear things up or is it just mine?
It wasn't long before the old fence was ready to become the new fence.
I'm really proud of the Island King. He did a spectacular job and we now have a really awesome fence.
He already had the hardware for the gate in the garage so our fence ended up not costing anything.
Woo-hoo! We found good soil to add to the garden in our own yard and now we found and built a fence from free materials. This is great.
Now all we need is mulch.
"I'm NOT paying for pine straw" has been the Island King's mantra for years and as soon as I mentioned mulch he shook his head and told me that buying mulch was out of the question.
I smiled and decided that the next time he went on a photo shoot I'd head to the store for mulch and then he could whine about it later if he wanted to.
But that afternoon he came inside, smiling from ear to ear and telling me that he'd solved our mulch problem.
The man had been driving around town picking up all of the yard trash that had been put out by the road.
At first I thought he was nuts but then when I saw what he was emptying out of the trash bags he'd collected I realized this was a great idea.
Piles and piles of oak leaves and pine straw. Exactly what I wanted and once again - it was free!
Our garden won't have that "manicured" look that you see but hopefully we'll have a summer filled with fresh veggies.
Now if I can keep my brown thumb from killing everything we plant we'll be ok.Labels: Staying
