So the top
ten two things about having a white picket fence:
1) Looks really great when it is properly maintained.
2) Maintaining fence gives regular injection to appreciation for ingenuity of Tom Sawyer.
3)
Reality. Owning and maintaining a picket fence is like having a hairstyle so complicated that it takes 12 eight hour days of work to get it just so...and it looks terrific for a few months. Then, you have to decide if you want to get back in that chair or let your hair go it's own way.
This is why most white picket fences look like this:
Charming, but in a "someone loved me once" sort of fashion.
Tragically, I realize that is also why my hair looks like this:
Hair maintenance issues aside, this was also the demeanor of our own picket fence around what we call "The Anniversary Garden". The fence and garden were created by the previous owners, in honor of a wedding anniversary, and although the garden has changed nearly all the plantings, the fence remains. It had been about three years since I last applied a coat of paint, and that was probably two years too long. It had fallen into pretty severe disrepair, and so early this spring I started the project of putting it to rights.
I purchased wood and started cutting new pickets to replace the ones so damaged and rotted they were not worth salvaging. There were a lot. But then, if you look behind the garden, you can see the large field that helps insure the fence requires frequent maintenance. We are kinda famous at Cowfeathers for our fierce and unrelenting wind. The field behind us, the direction from whence said "wind of fame" blows, serves as an effective sand blasting service.
As in this photo where the suited and helmeted worker handily removes paint from the brick building, the field behind our house uses dirt to blast paint off our fence. And house. A hem. Don't want to tackle that one yet.
The pickets needed help. Most of them are in worse repair than below.
So, for much of April, I scraped loose paint off salvageable pickets and made new for the ones not worth the effort.
Not much paint left.
And dozens of new.
Next is the tedious task of painting pickets. I have found that the good old fashioned paint brush is the most effective. In our wind and with our house and garden where they lie, using a paint sprayer would be a disaster. The roller is harder to manipulate between pickets, and you have to paint front, back and sides. So, brush it is. And a few coats of primer.
Progress is slow, but by the middle of May, the entire fence is repaired and primed. Then June happened.
Still primed. But now full of flowers, cannot paint even if I had the time. Which I do not.
Then, July and August happened.
Our primed picket fence is a fine background for life at Cowfeathers. August turned to September and to October, and I felt the time slipping away, as well as the two coats of primer- already looking haggard.
So, November's mission was to get it done before winter, which would mean next spring. Here, today, on only November 4, I am covered in paint, but then again, so is the fence.
Julia is sporting a bit too. Help, you know.
