My herb garden is situated so that I can look out my kitchen window and marvel at my green-thumbed success. But when I look out at it now I become more and more dismayed as it is covered in massive craters created by the Hens as take their daily dirt baths. Not to mention that our half-dog apparently loves chives because she's chewed off the tops giving them the appearance of having joined the army. But what I couldn't figure out was why these craters have been steadily growing in size. The Hens haven't gotten that much bigger since all the snow melted... Turns out that they only started the problem, but they weren't totally to blame.
My lovely Chowder-puff apparently also enjoys a good dirt bath. She digs herself a nice hole and enjoys the cool dirt on a hot day. My Other Half tells me that she's always done this.
So I took a stand and I finally have the white picket fence of my dreams. Okay, so maybe it's not exactly the fence I had once envisioned- the one that circles my perfectly manicured suburban cottage- but already, I'm in love. It's a two-foot tall miniature version of that fence to protect my chives and keep furry feet out of my dirt.
I never used to like the saying "good fences make good neighbors," it seemed so unfriendly and un-neighborly. If you've got good neighbors then why would you put up a fence? And if they're not good how can a fence help? What I didn't realize was that when the boundaries are clearly communicated then no one steps over the line. You don't have to be the bad guy and constantly tell people- aka unruly dogs and chickens- where they just don't belong. Let's face it, no one wants to tell someone to back off, or to back out (of a garden, for instance), so let a fence do it for you.
As it turns out, fences make for great neighbors, and house-mates.
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