Score!

I need a clothesline, specifically an umbrella-type clothesline. I love clothes dried on the line and it is ridiculous to run a dryer in the summer (especially on those days when it is 90 degrees outside). I searched a couple local hardware places like Home Depot and Lowes, but they didn’t have one for sale on their websites. I did locate some elsewhere and the cheapest is about $40. I decided I was going to have to budget for this item.

Don went up in to the woods this week and left me here, mostly alone (Chrystal is home). No dog, no husband. COOL. I had some projects that required that there be no dog around, specifically weeding my flower beds. I also decided to try to fix the fence problem.

That isn’t what this post is about, but is the background to my Big Score.

Sunday I spent puzzling over the situation.

This is the fence that I had around my prayer garden. Actually, I have something similar around most of my flower beds in an effort to keep Murphy out of the flowers (he likes to pick them, pee on them, stomp them and chew on them). The fence worked for a short while, then Murphy discovered he could jump over it.

I tried running a couple wires above the section around my prayer garden, but he jumped that, too.

Sunday all I accomplished was a load of frustration. I finally just watered the prayer garden. I needed the ground soft so I could weed on Monday.

On Monday, I began to get a brilliant idea. I stopped at Home Depot to price chicken wire. Ugly, but effective. There beside the chicken wire was a plastic version of chicken wire for half the price. Hmmm: no cuts and not ugly. SOLD. I thought we had fence posts that would work, so I came on home and set to work. The plastic version was going to work, but we only had 3′ fence posts and I needed 4′ posts. I wasn’t about to run back down to Home Depot in the 90-degree heat.

But the prayer garden is also my shade garden and I figured I could pull a weed or two now that I had the ground softened. So I set to work. And that was when I saw IT. The Coveted Item. IT was laying in the weeds in the back yard of the rental behind us, newly revealed because the renter finally mowed down his crop of weeds with a weed-eater. I wanted IT. But I also hardly know the neighbor… I was going to have to find a way to go around and ask if they would sell IT to me…

Tuesday, I bought the fence posts I needed and finished my fence.

Okay, it isn’t a perfect job, but it certainly is functional and it provides a safe haven for my precious shade plants and it should be too tall for Murphy to jump. The board on the right is my makeshift gate: it is just wide enough for me to squeeze through there because the length of the fence was just short of what I needed (which is good because I also needed a gate).

I’ll blog later on my plans for the area. For now, I was finished and I figured I deserved a glass of celebratory wine. Barely had the wine poured when the phone rang.

The neighbor across the street from me wanted to go walking. Oh, what the heck – I could use a good walk and then we could both have a glass of wine in celebration of my fence. So I said, “yes.” We took her two little dogs (a Yorkie and a mini-doxie) and headed to the park. And who should we meet but the renter with his big German Shepherd, Mack!

So I asked: would he consider selling IT to me for $5 or $10? He looked a little like a deer in the headlights (heck, every time I talk to him that is how he looks), but he said, “I’ll just give it to you.”

To which I said, “Great! Just toss it over the fence!”

There it is! My clothesline! It is all there and no rust. The wire looks good, too. I am so jazzed! Now all I need is a place to put it up…

Yep, I have a useless corner of the yard…

A different angle of the wasted space. It’s behind the little dog run that is Murphy’s current home. We’ll move him to a bigger kennel eventually, but this space will still be largely unused.

Now my only problem is… How will I keep Murphy out of the laundry? I don’t want to have to fence off the clothesline… Hmmm… I think I will have to enlist Don’s help: I hang the laundry in the AM, before I go to work and after Murphy is kenneled. Don takes the clothes off the line when he gets home and before he lets Murphy out of the kennel. That could work…

I’ll keep you posted (assuming you care, of course).