Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Fencing

Following up on a lead from a fellow gardener at the Happy Valley Community Gardens, I headed down to the storage and work area for Bellingham's commercial fishing fleet at the Bellingham Marina on a mission to get enough discarded fish net to complete a fence around my new garden space.It didn't take me long to find the area and someone to ask directions to the dumpster where I had been told the fishermen discard their old nets. Near that dumpster, I found a big pile of nets and many options for my fencing. I found black nets, gray ones, brown ones, even an orange net, all heaped and tangled together on the pavement.
There was even a pile of green netting.
I decided on black, so began to pull out the nets in order to find the perfect piece to use for my garden fence. Even though the sun was hot over my head, my new fencing material was cool and still slightly damp from its past life as a fishing net. Hand over hand, I pulled and pulled, stretching out a long piece of net, wondering what it felt like to be a commercial fisherman pulling in a net full of fish. It didn't take long for me to discover, however, that these nets were huge - and heavy. Finally, I found a spot where two sections of nets had been woven together by a blue cord. I worked for a long time and untied knot after knot and pulled yards of that blue cord out, separating long pieces of the nets. Yet it still felt that I was making no real progress as the length of those nets still seemed to go on forever. The nets seemed hundreds of miles long and I had no knife in my backpack, no scissors with me. I was totally unprepared, and the nets were bigger than me.
~~~
Later in the evening, with help, we went back to the waterfront, back to that tangled pile of discarded fishing nets. This time with both a knife and a scissors in hand, we worked together and pulled a huge section of net out and laid it across the parking lot. Sniping and cutting web after web after web of that huge net, finally we had a generous sized piece to use for my fence. Loading it into the back of the truck, we drove off, ready to build my garden fence.

1 comment:

  1. Right on Rose, Let me know i'll go with you next time. All is well today. there is hope. Peace Kathy

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