You have to look closely but we found a stream at the bottom of the garden.  This is of course a result of the rain we seem to have had continuously for about 36 hours.  We couldn’t have seen this before I cut back the gorse so there’s another advantage of gorse harvesting like fury.

With the rain gone we enjoyed an almost Spring like day.  Sunny and warm so we dashed (well almost) to get an early start on the chores outside we’ve been wanting to do for ages.

With our bassets getting bigger and continuing to disobey orders not to sit in the flower beds there was nothing for it, we had to create the basset prison to keep them out.  I’ve had a few prototypes of fencing on the go but today was the day that we were going for the full installation.

So how do you go about putting in your own border fencing to keep fido off your flowers?

First you need to some wire at a suitable size.  This is not an easy thing to achieve and in our case required us cutting down a larger size so it was made to measure.  Today I cut over 30m of wire on our mesh fencing to cut it in half.  I have the blisters to prove it too!  When you do this you end up with this.

From this.

Then you need some posts.  Preferably cut to size.  I’m using 600m precut pegs that are bashed into the ground to give a 400mm height.

Now that might look dandy but I can tell you bashing in those posts was no easy task.  See in the picture above bottom left there is a mean looking mallet?  Well, said mallet broke after just a few posts so I had to improvise to keep things moving.  Here’s what you have to do.

First start by tapping the post in till it’s stable with a nice heavy hammer (kindly left by one of the builders!).

Then take a spare peg and give it a good few wacks.

If you are in any doubt about whether it’s the right height – check and if it’s still not at 400mm try a bit harder.

Repeat this process until you have sufficient posts.  The carefully arrange your wire around and staple with a high powered staple gun.  And after all that effort you get something like this.

Not bad for a first effort at fence building I think.  There are some posts that could be straighter but when you’re improvising it’s not going to be perfect!

Having put up the fence it becomes immediately apparent that you’re going to have to smarten things up a little more inside the fencing and do the weeding.

Geez, can’ta girl get any peace and quiet to potter on in the garden?

When you’ve finished a spot of weeding you can then get on and put some more trees into the area you’ve been gorse harvesting in.

Then when you’ve finished that you can clean the chickens out and be followed around by your two basset shadows!

Phew, I think I’ve earned a beer and a bath tonight.  I’m settling in to watch Monty Don’s new series on gardens around the world.  I had the book for my birthday so am so looking forward for more inspirations for my garden.