Little Fence Done
My husband, bless him, likes things to look good. Hence we live in a strawbale house that we built which looks really awesome. Clean lines, nice spaces, wonderful craftsmanship. When I told him about my little fence idea he was not immediately on board. But over time he acquiesced. Then we drew it out. He wanted it with slats running horizontal, double sided, square-cut cedar pickets. I wanted it built from salvaged wood and cedar trellis, one side only. I fully admit that mine would have looked wimpy and thrown together. We did his design and it looks great. I am often impatient. I am often ruled by function and too hurried for form. He believes that form and function are equally important. And whenever we finish a project like our house or the fence, I have to admit he is right.
Here are some pictures of our little fence:
On the downside slope of this "room" we are considering our options. 1) We can use railroad ties and build up the soil to even out the slope. This option is the easiest but creosote is not the best material to mess with. 2) We could use recycled concrete. But it would take a lot of this heavy stuff and its wobbly. 3) We could use old tires. Oddly they don't leach heavy metals over time as you might expect. If interested in the research on this go to the earthship website for details. I would need to find these tires and then fill them with soil we already don't have.
For those interested, we have successfully germinated California Buckeye seeds. I did not know if this would be hard or easy. Seemed pretty straight forward.
I decided to transplant the Elder (Sambucus n. mexicana) which I wanted close to the house but realized it would get too big. I put it near the California Buckeye tree we planted at the end of the most eastern part of the little fence. You can barely see it in the first fence photo. They are both natives and should be happy together. Plants, like most people, benefit from some company. There are those odd ones that don't like others, like Black Walnut and actively discourage them, but these are rare. So in permaculture we talk about" guilds" which are plant groupings that help each other along. I also planted the Pink Ladies bulbs I got from my father. They are drought tolerant and remind me of a very sweet time in my childhood.
Here are some pictures of our little fence:
On the downside slope of this "room" we are considering our options. 1) We can use railroad ties and build up the soil to even out the slope. This option is the easiest but creosote is not the best material to mess with. 2) We could use recycled concrete. But it would take a lot of this heavy stuff and its wobbly. 3) We could use old tires. Oddly they don't leach heavy metals over time as you might expect. If interested in the research on this go to the earthship website for details. I would need to find these tires and then fill them with soil we already don't have.
For those interested, we have successfully germinated California Buckeye seeds. I did not know if this would be hard or easy. Seemed pretty straight forward.
I decided to transplant the Elder (Sambucus n. mexicana) which I wanted close to the house but realized it would get too big. I put it near the California Buckeye tree we planted at the end of the most eastern part of the little fence. You can barely see it in the first fence photo. They are both natives and should be happy together. Plants, like most people, benefit from some company. There are those odd ones that don't like others, like Black Walnut and actively discourage them, but these are rare. So in permaculture we talk about" guilds" which are plant groupings that help each other along. I also planted the Pink Ladies bulbs I got from my father. They are drought tolerant and remind me of a very sweet time in my childhood.
great write up, if i do say so myself! :) just to get my 2 cents in here too, unfortunately we ran out of salvaged wood that we could use for the pickets otherwise that would be nice. also rather than using concrete for the post holes, we used road base packed about 1'2" deep around the posts. this is so that when and if we want to move them it will be much easier and we dont need to use concrete.
ReplyDeletei was a bit skeptical of the fencing idea to partition the outdoor space but now i really like it. its a nice architectural element and makes the space feel more human scale.
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