Garden Fence

I think I am really getting a bit of spring fever.  I find myself thinking more and more about digging in the dirt, cleaning my yard and planting pretty flowers.    Because we live in the woods and have lots of deer, planting certain things in the yard and garden is nearly impossible.  When we plant broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, lettuce and certain other veggies, the deer nibble them down to the ground before dawn.  Expensive and frustrating.  So, we are trying to fence part of the garden in with a five foot fence in the hopes that it will deter the deer.  We will see.

After considering the cost and my fence building abilities, we opted for a wattle fence or as I like to call it, a thicket fence.  I cut down young sappling trees from our woods and wove them in and around some old steel posts which we already had.  Johnny and I worked on it for about five hours today and I love the quaint look.  It should look nice with pretty plants and flowers all around it this summer.

I think cucumbers will look just great growing all over this fence.    This needs to be a pickle making year so hopefully I can produce about 50 pounds.  I surely hope it will be a good weather year for gardening.

After we had been working for about two hours and were looking all grungy, Johnny announced that he was going to eat at Frisco Deli for lunch and nothing would do him but I go with him.  Actually I really wanted to continue working on the fence so we could finish it today.  But I finally decided to go in the house and clean up a bit and go with him.  As we were driving to Pearl, the radio talkshow announcer reminded the male listeners that Monday will be Valentine's Day and today is Saturday so they better get going so they can make mama happy.  Johnny looked at me and said "I'm goin."  I have always said that there is not a romantic bone in Johnny's body, but that really is not true.  He is just not consistently romantic.  When he is, he really is, but when he is not, he really is not.

When we got to Pearl's Frisco Deli it was closed for the day, so we opted for Ruby Tuesday's which was right behind Frisco.  He said that this was for Valentine's rather than tomorrow when it would be so crowded.  On the way home he acted really coy and stopped by Chapman's Florist to see Lisa who sings in the choir at church with us.  I couldn't imagine why in the world he thought we should just drop in and talk to Lisa while she was trying to work.  While we were talking with her, she brought out a cute container shaped like a big Hershey's Hug filled with three red roses.  They were for me and I was really surprised and pleased.  He was quite proud of himself for surprising me and being so sneaky.  He said he meant to write "Dear Jan.  Your rack is unreal." on the card.  The Faith Hill TV advertisement for TeleFloral was his inspiration.  I found his pleasure with himself extremely romantic.  Funny, huh?

Seems like I am battling the same demon that put me out of commission  for two months last fall - shingles.  There is a new patch of bumps on the back of my neck right at the hair line which itches like crazy, but hurts like the devil, expecially if I scratch it.  Now the bumps feel a bit scaley - it just has to be shingles again.  Thankfully the pain is nowhere as bad as it was the first time.  My jaw is semi-locked about 75% of the time and it is very painful to eat.  May neck and shoulders hurt quite a bit, but thank goodness for ibuprophen and Advil.  I pray the pain does not get any worse.  I am just trusting the Lord to help me through this again and to help me not think about it any more than necessary.  One of the bad things about this illness is that it is contagious if you have not had chicken pox, so I really don't want to get near Baker and Sidney.  I think they really wanted to come to Nonnie and Bop's house today.   Maybe in a few days it will be OK for me to be around them.  Here's hoping.