Too busy to blog

GroHappy has been a bit quiet for the last week or so not for lack of ideas or activities but because of them. Casa Keller has been a whirlwind of activity as we have been reclaiming our yard and replanting bulbs, shrubs, grass and trees. The septic men have left and with their departure came many a rebuilding and replanting project. Exhausted by the end of each day, I didn’t have the energy to write about all my activities. But now I do.

The first project was to rebuild the fence along the far side of our property. For the last month, deer have been deterred with flimsy deer netting supported by unstable 6-foot steel poles. After over a decade of frustration in trying to sample our smorgasbord of deer food, they have been conditioned not to enter our property. But I wasn’t going to take any more chances so last Saturday with my son-in-law Alan, we started the process of rebuilding.

When rebuilding an old fence the key decision to make is whether you save or discard the old material. As each new section would cost over $100, it was an easy choice; when we dismantled the fence we were able to keep all the boards save one. All of the post bottoms, however, were a punky rotted mass of pulp. The easy choice would have been to throw them out and get new ones but I considered that I would need to replace them in another 10 years or so. Instead, I cut out the rotted cedar replacing it with a piece of pressure-treated pine. As most of the pine would be buried (with the rest covered by a cedar board) few would notice my thriftiness.

Thankfully Alan provided much of the brute labor in digging and measuring the holes while I fabricated the new posts. We were both amazed at how quickly it all came together as we worked as a team. By the end of the day, we had finished installing the fence posts and were ready for a beer. Coming from a career where most of the results and activities are not tangible, I have always found a great satisfaction in building or planting something. A physical thing has a permanence that is difficult to replace with one that is ethereal.

My wife Juana became my helper to replace the rails the next day. Some of the ends were slightly rotten so we cut them off and separated them by lengths and appearance. We then started the measuring and marking the posts so the rails could be installed in-line and parallel to each other. Because the topography of the yard rose and pitched in new ways given its transformation via bulldozers, each section was approached carefully. But we finished all save one section by the end of the day. Time for another beer. The job was almost done (or so I thought.)

That evening as I was relaxing my wife said, “why not build a gate for that far side of the fence?” It was a great idea but one I wished had been enunciated before I had set all the posts in concrete. So I now needed to design a gate.

It didn’t turn out to be too hard a job as I had some cedar boards lying around as well as a piece of trellis. I found some hardware from an old gate that I could reuse and with a quick run to the hardware store for a turnbuckle and some galvanized bolts I had everything I needed.

Gates can be tricky to build, particularly one this big. It’s important to ensure that it is square so that when installed it doesn’t bind and can swing clear. You do that by measuring the diagonals between the top of one member and the bottom of the other. If they are the same, you have a rectangle. Otherwise it is a parallelogram, which is not necessarily a rectangle.

After cutting all the pieces, I was able to lay them out in a parking space and square everything up. It actually came together much more quickly than I would have thought. Mounting it wasn’t nearly as easy but after a few false starts it is up and working perfectly. Time for another beer.