Sweet silence...and other outdoor stuff

Finally, something other than food to blog about!

Today's post was made possible by our neighbor's dogs. They spend all day barking at us, our house, our dogs, or us if we ever have the audacity to step outside. Georgia, the large German Shepherd, is the biggest offender. She's been teaching the others the fine art of barking. Other neighbors have been complaining as well. So, Adam devised a plan to hopefully shut them up. One problem is that most people know we have a lot of dogs since they see ours out with me. But not everyone realizes she also has a lot of dogs and people think that the barking dogs are ours...we don't want animal control fining us for their dogs.


We started at around 2. We tore down the old fence so we had no choice but to finish it that night which meant working into the dark hours. Mike even stuck around the whole time to help make sure we weren't having to work too late. It was a great help having a third person there.


Adam did most of the nailing while Mike and I were more in charge of getting the boards to Adam where he needed them, supplying him with more nails and various other little jobs.

I was screwing in a horizontal board that the slats would later get nailed to when I broke the bit. It was the only one that size that Adam had so he made a quick trip to the auto parts store down the street to get a new one. While he was gone, I ran inside and made a margharita pizza with an extra pizza dough I had baked earlier in the week. I slipped it in the oven just as he pulled into the driveway. We took a quick break to grab a bite to eat.




We finished around 9. It was a long day and when we sat down, I started to feel VERY sleepy! I worked harder than I thought I had. So what we actually did was extend the wooden fence we put in 5-6 years ago and then wrapped it around the front of our neighbor's yard. Adam got permission, of course. There were two reasons to pay for their part of the fence... 1 is that now there are no holes for the yorkies to slip in and out of and then come into our yard to torment our dogs. There's actually a line of solid cinder blocks lining the inside of the fence so Georgia can't dig holes for them to get out of. The other reason is so that they can't see the street and hopefully won't spend as much time barking. So far, it's very promising. I have hardly heard her at all since we put the fence up!!!! The little dogs are quiet since she's quiet. I'm hoping it lasts but only time will tell. When I put the curtains up in the dining room (the room she can see from the yard) she was quiet for a couple of weeks before she got bored enough to just bark at nothing all day.


We're also going to be fencing in the front of the dog's pen on our side as well but it got to be too late that night. We also have to go ahead and line the whole inside of our fence with the same solid cinder blocks because Georgia has been digging under the fence on her side all voer the place and then gnawing on the slats and making big holes in them. The stupid little yorkies stick their heads through the holes...I'm not sure how they haven't been bitten yet. But like I said, that's a project for another day.

Something else I've been working on is my garden plot. This is the area that Adam had pulled the bushes out of so I could have it for a garden. I started in the fall with a shovel. It was very slow work. But this time around, I am using the pick ax. It's going so much faster! I still have to pick the dirt up with a shovel and haul it out but it will be much easier now that the ground is lossened. I had these giant plants that were as tall as the house in the corner. Adam hated them. They did look pretty bad right there, I will admit. Anyway, I've been getting as many roots of that plant out as possible as I go. They are huge and really stuck in there! I'm thinking I will be having some of this plant poking out for the life of the yard.