themagnoliatreeblog

Fencing, or lack of it, has been the bane of my life in trying to keep dogs out. My garden is small and so is the little furry tornado which tries to get into the garden and run amok. Ideally I would like my garden fenced in, however I have a problem that it doesn’t all belong to me and that a strip of about two feet wide is borrowed from my neighbour. In the meantime, I have to depend on recycling and upcycling to fence off my patch. I do have an old, tatty gate which was rescued from a farm, it works fine with an auto spring which makes sure the gate closes behind me.

The other side of the garden had an interwoven panelling fence which was well past its allotted span and had blown to bits during some gale force winds. It didn’t just blow down and it is not an exaggeration about it being blown to bits, Fortunately someone was about to dispose of some fencing. It was fairly new wood but the house owner wanted his hedge removed and a completely new fence, so I managed to get the wood and the stretch of fencing was replaced, not very professionally but it does seem quite solid.

A few months’ ago, back in recycling mode, I acquired some storage radiator bricks, just enough to make a tidier step into my shed. The person disposing of the bricks also wanted a new home for some fencing. I took the smallest section I could, but it was enough to give me a fence. For easy access to my containers, I will be putting my ‘fence’ on hinges. It should look tidier than the side of my daughter’s old cot.

Because I have a very small garden, it never stays the same for long. I had a compost bin beside the greenhouse but I felt it was taking up valuable space, so I moved it to just beside my back door. I used to have a wormery there, but there was always a tragedy with it. A neighbour’s cat fell out of the window, landed on the wormery and broke the lid. Then a worm got trapped in the tap, the sump filled up and most of them drowned. I never felt happy with keeping these wee fellows confined to a box anyway, it was a bit like being ‘battery worms’ in a small box with no freedom. So I added them along with their castings to the composter.

I kept the composter just to recycle compost rather than make it. Adding some nutrients, the worm castings and the contents from the bokashi bins seemed to be enough to give some reasonable compost. Now that the summer is fading away, I started emptying spent compost back into the composter and I was surprised to see so many worms in the pots. I will try not to add too much green waste, I don’t want them cooking.