DO fence me in. (Oh, and cut the phone lines and almost kill yourself while you’re at it!)

I’ve been begging for a split rail fence in the front yard for three years (it was my favorite part of our original re-landscaping design), but Tom has insisted all along that the fence is pretty much the last thing to do and I’d have to wait until the rest of the yard is pretty much done. The fence, he’s said all along, is more like the cherry on the sundae or the frame around the painting.

(Fine. HE never said that; he only implied it. Kat actually vocalized it… because she knows how to turn her dad’s thoughts into visual poetry.)

So guess what Tom did last weekend? He generously created a beautiful split rail fence, exactly as I’d envisioned:

We bought the rails already “pre-punched.” They match his gorgeous garden shed pretty well, don’tcha think?

He stained both the rails and the posts so they can withstand the wet Pacific Northwest weather.

Then he rented a post hole digger and started digging. Was he looking out for phone wires? Most decidedly not…

As he hand-finished those holes, did he run into two severed ends of what seemed to be our phone line? He might have. I’m not allowed to say.

(But can I just say right here that, had he run into severed wires with that powerful post hole digger – let’s just say… and had those wires been live electrical wires -- well, I get sick just thinking about it…)

He certainly wouldn’t have gotten to this peaceful part of the project.

And we wouldn’t be appreciating this beautiful new fence because we’d be… oh, maybe planning a funeral! (I’m not feeling so good…)

And sure, I’d end up finishing the fence, but I’d hate it.

Not love it like I love this fence.

I’m fine with a dead phone line. As long as it's the only dead thing around here. (But we probably should get it fixed, eh?)