Gardening

Addy does some.

Apparently the plant life gets in the way of her digging massive, utterly pointless holes for unsuspecting Food Ladies to step into.

While Addy was landscaping, I was cleaning the hen house.  It is sadly lacking in chickens, as our resident coyote once again had a poultry buffet and ate my beautiful rooster and like 5 hens in the space of two days.  I chased him away at 2 AM with a broom, but the damage had been done :(  All I have left are 5 hens and three pullets I hatched out this Spring (two of which turned out to be roos, OF COURSE).

BUT, I got a little surprise when I was cleaning out the coop:

Totes adorabs!!

Now that summer is going away (boo hoo!) and it’s getting dark so early, and the coyote is bold as brass, I feel like a fenced area for the dogs would be a really good idea.  I also thought it was a good idea last year when I convinced my landlord to start building me a fence.  Alas, while he is a good hearted man with many fine qualities, finishing what he starts is NOT one of them.  He built a length of fence across the front of my house and then totally lost interest in the project.  10 months later I badgered, cajoled, texted, nagged and pestered him into pounding posts across the back of what would be the yard, which fired him up just enough to acquire two gates for the yard about 6 weeks ago … and then got lost in the vortex of landlordly ideas once again.  Then the bugger moved to Alberta.

So today I took matters into my own hands and decided to finish what some man had started.

I measured and cut some boards and started filling in the sad space between the fence posts, and put up the gate.  Then I ran out of deck screws.

Whipped over to the hardware store and acquired more deck screws, then came back still all afire with my own good intentions.  And then my jigsaw broke.

I had a good old fashioned temper tantrum … even kicked a couple of things; then I went rooting through landlord’s work truck (same place I liberated the cordless screwdriver from) and found a circular saw.  SO MUCH BETTER than the jigsaw, btw.  And a few hours later, VOILA!

We are now fenced on two sides.  It only took 4.5 hours (plus, like, 11 months).  And I am sunburned to shit, my arms are killing me (if in fact I still have arms) and I basically stuck my head under the tap and consumed about 900 liters of water.

There’s one 15 foot space at the other end of the house that needs a post pounded so I can fence in that side, and along the West side of the yard there are already poles from when horses lived here, but I can’t get to them without weedwhacking out the bush.  Which is not currently possible because the weedwhacker is broken, but I am going to fix that as soon as I figure out where to buy replacement gas feed hosing.  Then I am going to afix the livestock fencing to the fence, and a board along the bottom to keep agile Woos and hole-digging Addys in (and hungry bastard coyotes OUT) and I will – after 5 years of living here – have a fenced yard for the dogs.  Where I intend to put them often.  Harumph.

If you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself, I tell you!  (Except I am totally going to pay my stepdad to put up the page wire, because I know from experience that I HATE putting up wire fencing.  It’s extremely pokey.)

The dogs were NO help whatsoever.  Apparently fence building is “boring.”

I have been elected Leader of the Resistance and I am here to tell you that your Saturday activity is dull.  Amuse us, or suffer the consequences.  kthaaaanx!

Look dog … I gave you guys a stick.  HAVEN’T I DONE ENOUGH??

I wonder how long it would take to beat her to death with this?  Hmmm…

I dunno, but I’m TOTALLY going to eat her once she’s dead.  Nom nom nom.

Yeah yeah, okay, I GET IT.  Here, play with the flying ring thing.

Yay!  Oh sweet routine of bringing things to you that you threw away in the first place!

(Nine dogs and only one flying ring thing.  Bound to be some arguments)

Unless you’re Piper, for nobody disagrees with Piper.

Although that is not strictly true anymore.  Lately Spring has been disagreeing with Piper sometimes.  Watching the dynamics, I think Piper is aging out of the Matriarchal role.  She’s nearly 12, and not so steady on her feet these days (I guess not everyone can be ageless, like Tweed) and Spring seems to be priming herself to step up to the plate as the incumbent.  It’s both fascinating, and sad.  I still remember when 5 month old Piper strolled into my house, looked at Briggs and said “I’ll take you eventually, when the time is right” and then turned around and bossed Tweed into white bellied submission.  It’s kind of heartbreaking to watch her body betray her leadership skillz.

Wootie, I am going to borrow your beatin’ stick for a minute.

SPRING!  Bad girl, BAD!!

Hah.  At last, someone other than me is bad.

Oh TWoo, don’t kid yourself.  None of your ‘bad’ can come close to trumping the badness of the Iggies.  Although they are getting better.  I have solved Ender’s “wake up whining in the pre-dawn hours” problem. What I thought I was Ender needing to pee was actually Ender crying because his blankie had fallen off him and he couldn’t get back under it.  And he MUST be under a blanket at all times, apparently.  I solved this by cramming a giant fleece blanket in there that takes up almost the whole crate and falls over him like a flap door, so he can never ever get out of it until I let him out of the crate.  Now he lets me sleep as late as I want.  He has also stopped running up to the road to yodel at passers-by, because I tie him to Addy.  That’s right – I have a long line that has clips on both ends and they are clipped together so until they figure out how to run away in unison, like a team of Clydesdales, they won’t be going anywhere fast.  HAH!  Plus, you know, the fence will solve a a lot of that.  He still jumps up and bites me in the small of the back when he is excited though, and he gets out of his blanket in his easy chair 80 trillion times a day and then whines / jumps at the back of my head / leaps on and off my desk until I settle him back in his blankie.  Spoiled brat.

He’s pretty happy though :)

As for me, I’m pretty dead-on-my feet.  I think I’ll go have a beer (this one’s for you, Sadist!) and bid you adieu.  Until next time, friends!