As you might know, we’re working on a fence between the house and the garage, a sort of privacy, decorative, dog-stopping fence.

And we have very limited resources at the moment… summer is a slow sales time for us… and so we are doing what we can, with what we have. I had gotten this bundle of 1 x 3 x 6s for the super cheap price of $15. I believe there was over 50 in the bundle. Nothing really wrong, just culls and a few wonky warped ones… but most were nice enough for our projects. We’ve been using them all over the place, super handy. They are the horizontal cross beams of our fence project.

But I thought they would go nicely into the fancy gate we were going to try and make! And here is the story…

First we measured out the height we wanted it to be, and cut down all the boards we had left. It was about 10 of them I believe.

And spaced them out in the size of the gate… thing is, after we were done, we didn’t have a lot of pieces left to make as cross connectors, you know that cute z pattern you usually see on a fence. But I knew that we had to put some extra support or the gate would sag quickly and fall apart. So we took all the cut offs and made a cool pattern!

We had to get some gate hardware, but it was not bad, only $6. It would have been nice to find it, or use something else, but I wanted this to last a while, so, sometimes you just have to go with new. I am proud of the fact that we’ve been doing a great deal of our remodeling/rehabbing off Craig’s List and found things, and mark downs and deals. It’s really made a huge difference in the cost we’ve spent on the farm versus the Moby. Surprising, really.

I have to say, Jessy is becoming the regular little tool gal! She’s always been willing to try things out, but she did almost all the gate design and construction with just a little input from me. Maggie was off doing something else, as she is my usual tool gal, but Jessy wanted to work on the gate. So I let her! I think the more they do and are invested in their homestead, the more they will cherish it. And I know that Jess will look back and say, that’s my gate! I hope she smiles.

Getting it to hang properly was an art in itself. Thankfully we only had to redo one set of holes! It’s a 3 person job for sure, and there was no way I could take a picture until we got it hung. It’s such a delicate dance, you want it to hang properly and you have to be careful that it reaches the other side where you want and all. Can be tricky. Be sure to take a lot of deep breathes and try not to yell at your helpers.

I forgot to take a good picture, but we do have the gate up and all the fence foundations up. We are just starting to add the filler part, the sticks for privacy and all. It will take us a while, but we’re going to try and get it fuller by this weekend. Just a goal. A plan really. We have a LOT of sticks on the property. I think it will look very interesting and artsy!

I love the design she came up with! It almost looks Oriental a bit. It’s definitly going to be sturdy, all 300+ screws in the thing! (I just guessed… but there is a LOT of screws in it…) Painted up, it’s just beautiful and it works so nicely! It’s not meant to hold in water buffalo or anything, just to be a pretty garden gate for our courtyard. As time goes on, I’d like to add a few flowering bushes out front and some lovely flowers on the other side, just make it nice and pretty. What a great job by my girl children!!! Their mom is very proud of them!

My first batch of Siberian Iris are blooming! They are so delicate and beautiful. I’m so glad we could save them all. Nearly everything we brought from the Moby is doing well. We lost one apple tree, but to be honest, it was already a weakling and I wasn’t sure it would make it through the winter anyway. We have 12 trees and about 6 hostas and 8 iris and a wisteria and a goat’s beard that made it. The iris are doing lovely! Oh yeah and 4 lilacs!

The lilacs are still very young, and I was happy to see them just leafing out nicely and filling in. Two of them just went to town! They are nice and thick, lots of new growth. Next year, they should bloom wonderfully. But I’m so proud of this little trooper… she put out a nice little spray of flowers! Yeah lil’ Lilac! I just love lilacs and I was surprised to find none here on the estate. Lilacs and farm houses just seem to go hand in hand to me! Actually, I’m a little surprised, for a lady that eventually opened up a flower shop in the old house, there are really few plantings of perrienial flowers all over! Lots of tiger lilies and a small patch of purple iris… but that’s about it. No forsyntia bushes, or lilacs, heck not even any snowball bushes! Oh, now there was about 5 or 6 peony bushes and they bloomed rather quickly this year and were done. The weather has just been hard on plants for sure.

I’m making plans to work on the lack of flowers… My friend Jan is bringing me some splits from her gorgeous garden and I’m going to dig up a bunch of lilies for her! Isn’t that the best part of gardening? Sharing with friends? Now I can walk around and think, oh, those are from Jan! And remember her fondly with that memory! I wish I had more to share, but she’s happy, she doesn’t have any tiger lilies and I have about 27,000 of them. Apparently, the lady of the house really loved her lilies!

See the wisteria? It’s behind the iris in the left hand corner. That is my true hard luck case for sure! It was a nice big beautiful wisteria, that was getting busy and starting to send out some nice tendrils and all at the Moby. And then one day the puppy was bored and she chewed it down to a NUB!!!! Honest! In one short afternoon, she had reduced this 4 foot plant to about 9 inches of nothing. Oh my gosh… I almost killed her! Haha… okay, just smacked her around a lot… okay, I was very upset with her and sternly talked to the little wort.

Anyway, it was trying to come back, so I dug it up and poped it into a bag. A little white kitchen trash bag. Which I might add were a great way to transport most of everything we moved! But being just a stick in a bag, it got set aside in the SHED and forgotten! Well about two weeks later, we were looking for something and I found this poor little thing and it had like three little pale leaves on it, trying hard to grow. So I popped it into the garden space by the garage and hoped for the best!

Now look at it! Only three weeks later and it’s hopping! I can’t believe it. Apparently it loves the spot it’s in. Good rich dirt here at Windhaven, for sure. It’s got lots of little tendrils coming out and I think I will have to give it a nice trellis sooner than later! Perhaps I’ll have Jessy design me something that matches her gate nicely! It’s not toooo far from the fence!