Friends, it has finally happened. The thing I’ve pined for, obsessed over, hoped for for more than five years has finally come to fruition.
We got our fence, and it is a thing of beauty.
As many of you know, because we live on a corner lot, we do not have a proper back yard. Instead, the big block of open space on our lot is next to our house and exposed to the sidewalk, street, and gazing eyes of neighbors and passers-by. Because of this, we’ve never been able to let Otto or Thomas have much free reign in our yard, since it’s so easy for them to get away and run to the street. Hence my long and burning desire for a fence. But precisely because it is so exposed, we have never felt like we could put up a chain-link fence, since that’s just a little too ugly, in my opinion, to have as the most prominent feature of the part of our yard exposed to public view. We’ve had to save our pennies, then, for this cedar fence which, in my opinion, is both aesthetically and functionally beautiful.
Witness the loose dog in this photo. He has not been outdoors off-leash for close to five years, since in moments of squirrel-/bike-/child-/mailman-induced excitement he cannot be trusted to obey or come on command.
He cannot believe his luck today. When I first brought him outside, he was suspicious. He looked at me like, “what’s going on, food lady?” He proceeded to circle the perimeter, looking for invaders or possible venues for escape, I suppose. But once he decided things were okay, he morphed into dog-on-crack and began racing around the yard, frenzied and erratic. He would run up to me and play-bow, trying to get me to chase him, but of course I can’t run fast enough to make it worth his while. He fetched his ball longer than I’ve ever seen him stay focused on anything. After a while, I felt like going inside, and I called him to come with me. He did not budge. So I went inside anyway, and when I looked back out the window, he stood still for a moment, clearly thinking, “wait a minute, this is POSSIBLE? I can stay out here ALONE?” Then he ran off to resume his squirrel patrol.
He is a tired and happy dog.
The boy is no less happy, but he was almost as perpetual in his motion as Otto was in his, so I didn’t get any good action shots. You can see in the middle of the yard the remains of our once-huge silver maple tree, now reduced to a three-foot high and six-foot wide mound of mulch. (That is a story unto itself, and I will try to post about it sometime soon.) Thomas calls the pile of mulch a mountain and likes to run up and then barrel down. He only falls about half of the time, but he seems to have fun regardless of whether he falls. He is also pleased with his easy access to the new climber I picked up from Craigs’ List a few weeks ago.
As you can see, the yard feels fairly big, which sort of surprised me because I thought maybe the fence would have the opposite effect. I am pleasantly surprised.
In the back of the house we chose a taller and fancier style to provide some privacy from our neighbor’s house, which is just about 10 feel away on the other side of the fence.
I am IN LOVE with this fence. If only I had another $7,000 I could have put it around the entire yard. As it is, I only had enough mulah to put up the 7 panels you see here.
Now, imagine that rather than the dead plants and dirty concrete, this section of the yard were covered with a low deck. That’s our plan for the spring. I am spending quite a bit of time daydreaming about sitting on my deck and sipping margaritas. Mmmm.
At any rate, I think it turned out very nicely, and judging by the fact that we were out there for more than an hour last night even though the temperature was in the high 30s, I think we’ll be getting a fair amount of use out of the fence even before spring.
Huzzah!
