After staring at the unused fence panels the landlady left in our back yard for nearly four years, I finally put them to good use. This involved a whole lot of hassle, a word I have come to associate with every project to whose grindstone I apply my nose (case in point: our recording session last week where we recorded a bunch of songs but nothing actually made it to the hard drive).

When I moved into this apartment, the back yard was a total disaster area. But it was a back yard and therefore a big selling point. I've done a lot of work out there to make it presentable, and although it's gotten a lot better, it'll still never look like the Tuileries or anything. On major problem was the fence between our yard and the boarded-up, faux crackhouse next door.

Mr Bones despises rusty wire fencing

It looks like Sean and Sylvia are in a big box

As you can see part of the old fence is rusted wire 'garden' fencing. Somebody secured it by staple-gunning it to a couple of 2x4's stuck into the ground, and tying the ends to a rotten picnic table. The other part of the fence is a couple of disintegrating plywood boards. Actually, the existence of the fence in the first place is just plain stupid: The insane guy who owns the crackhouse was positive that people were stealing bricks out of his yard (which you'd need a machete to hack through all the weeds to find), so the landlady's flunkies built this halfhearted fence to appease him. He didn't even like it when the boards developed holes big enough for the cats to walk through. In silent retaliation, he shoved dead shrubs and metal pipes up against the gaps. Of course, the cats just jumped over the fence then. Sometimes I think I should just have him committed.

Anyway, the real fence panels were never properly mounted, so I finally took it upon myself to do it. It took forever to find a place that sold fence post spikes online, as I wasn't about to carry them home myself. They're each 3 feet long and weigh probably 20 pounds and I needed 4 of them. I ordered some from somewhere in Washington state. After several weeks of silence, I emailed to ask where my order was. Eventually a baffled woman called me, asking if I really wanted to order the spikes. Huh? She also was concerned about the time zone difference, fearing that at noon in Washington it would be "the middle of the night" in New York. Double huh.

The spikes showed up and this past weekend I set out to put the fence up. I didn't realize just how friggin' hot it was until I was well under way. I never sweated more in my life than in the past two days (and I've watched many George Bush speeches in the past, if that's any indication). First I had to clear the area for the spikes. This involved removing the nasty plywood boards, and removing all the debris along the property line. Then I had to start digging.

One of the boards from the old fence. Bleah.

Technically when using fence post spikes (as opposed to sinking the wooden posts in concrete) you're supposed to use a sledgehammer to drive them into the ground. I have no sledgehammer, but I do have a big rock. But there was no way I was gonna drive a metal spike 3 feet into the ground with a big rock. For some reason we have a post-hole digger in the back so I dug holes part of the way, filled them back up with dirt and hammered the spikes home the rest of the way down.

The ground along the eastern seaboard of the US is full of rocks. I couldn't go an inch without stopping to dig our a bunch of stones. This was a real pain. The upside is now we have many more rocks for the little rock garden I've been developing along the fence wall:

Then came the actual pounding of the spikes. I basically have the upper arm strength of a prepubescent girl so this was especially difficult. But the neighbors got a chuckle out of seeing me bash the hell out of the spikes until they were all the way in the ground. Then I had to use a hammer to shove the wood posts into the holsters on the spikes, also not much fun.

Once the posts were set, however, the hanging of the fence panel was pretty easy. You just lean them up against the post and affix a couple of nails. I was especially pleased that there was enough clearance that I didn't have to replant any of the flowers that run along the old fence; the new fence fits right inside the line.

View from the nazty side

Now the only problem is the fact that when the fence runs out at the back of the yard, we're back to gross rusty wire fencing. But I suppose it's nice that the fence doesn't go all the way down, it would feel way too boxed-in if it did. Next project: create an amusing cat-walk up and down the fence so the (thinner) cats can continue to get into the neighbor's precious dirt-pit of a yard. Maybe his paranoia is founded after all.

UPDATE: Many people come here looking for Fence Post Spikes (apparently no easier to find now than then). An intrepid reader actually pointed us in the right direction, so please look at this follow-up.

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