Well, I made myself a garden fence today…why do I post about it?….  Well because it was fun, creative and free, which are all inspiring to me, I thought they might be to you too.  I know it would have been easier to drive down to Home Depot a buy some easy insert lattice action, but who knows where that wood comes from and who puts it together, and heck why buy when you can DIY.  As I have said before I am also time rich and cash poor…and happen to live 100 yards from river with a generous willow patch…so I really saw no other way than to make it myself.  That and I had a vision of what I wanted and I knew I couldn’t buy it.  I  started with my inspiration.An amazingly beautiful fence on a meticulous farm in Patagonia, Chile we visited a few years back.  It was so tidy, keeping in these perfectly white sheep who were keeping the green, green grass perfectedly trimmed…. we might as well have been in the England…or as we called it Douglandia…but I will save that story for another time.  I also got a little inspiration wasting too much time on Pinterest.  Anyway, with the babe trying to pull himself up by hanging onto the rose bushes, a fence was in order around here. So we went down to the river & gathered a ton of really tall straight willow branches, trimmed off the side & top little branches….until we had nice clean long weaving sticks.  I actually did buy a few stripped cedar latillas which I cut down to 3ft each to use as the posts.  I would have used willow but Joel reminded me cedar was a lot stronger and would resist rot in the wet garden a lot longer than willow would.  I sunk them into the garden about 2 ft apart and about 1 ft deep with a sledge-hammer and then I was ready to weave.This was taken right as I sunk the first cedar posts…….And this was taken when I was down the weave.  It does the trick of keeping Jangy out of the garden and he sure seems to like it pulling himself up on it.His pure delight was more than I could have hoped for.Which made my delight all the more.

If you are inspired to do the same, just a little note– I used way more willow than I imagined I would have, I think there is something like 50 ten footers for a 1.5foot high fence.  Lucky willow is an abundant renewable resource here. Use what you have, the is earth is generous with her offerings if you know how to see them.  Here is a cool link called the Willow Bank for further inspiration