A big
Happy Birthday today to Carol Bennett. She continues to be the major vision and energy behind this garden.
Here is a "during" and "after" set of pictures with respect to my repair
of the fence on 17 Sep. I didn't think to take a "before" shot. (but for that, check the Aug 1 post "Natures Revenge" in the blog archives on the upper right of the blog)
These two sections were completely broken off and only being held up by
the overgrowth of roses on both sides. Although I had to do a lot of
pruning to get at the fence sections, much of it was dead anyway.
There is one more section that is broken off on just one end. But it
will have to wait for now as it is covered with roses and most are
healthy. There are also 4 or 5 broken pickets throughout I still need to
patch/replace. That, too, will wait until cooler weather.
Overall, the fence is holding up well. The roses have kept the kids off
for the most part. The soccer balls and kids do get to the pickets
once in awhile. The breaking of the whole 8 foot sections is mainly due
to the fact that the 4 brackets that hold up each section are made of
the same vinyl (pvc-like) material. The sun weakens them and the weight of the
plant growth/kids breaks them off. They are somewhat difficult to
replace.
However... in researching Lowes on-line, I see that everyone else in the
US has been having the same problems with the poor brackets and Lowes
now sells aluminum ones as replacements. I'll get some of these for the
future. I am particularly glad we originally went with the more
expensive option and put 4x4 posts inside the main uprights when we were
installing the fence in May of 2007. Can you believe it has been more than 4 years? There has been no problem with the posts and
they are still solid; well set in cement. We can thank our Pct #4 park staff for their fine help with that.
The garden is looking very healthy, given the weird summer. We have a lot of very large Butterfly Weed plants, but have seen no caterpillars. Usually we are having to buy new Butterfly weed throughout the summer just to replace what the caterpillars eat. Not so this year. Many are shoulder height as you can see here. We did see one Monarch while working on the roses, however, so that is a good sign. 
