We enclosed our vegetable garden with poultry netting, a green, plastic reusable fencing that keeps out unwanted neighbors like the cottontails who live under Next Door’s shed. We have never had a breach of the fencing. Heck, I can hardly climb over it ! I saw a bunny looking longingly through the fence at the celeriac, carrots, chard, beets, and turnips, and thought “Good fences make for good neighbors”. I can appreciate the bunnies and not get hostile. I guess that is what good fences are for. Boundaries are important.
How are your boundaries? Had bunny problems?
Trail Baboon 
Rise and Shine Baboons!
Oh, The Bunny Problem. Two or three days ago here, I should have named my twin as Farmer MacGregor. A fence helps a lot. But much of this seems to have been solved this year by the very cold and snowy winter. There are an ordinary number of bunnies in the neighborhood this summer, as opposed to last year when the area lawns were squirming with them. And I discovered a nest of newborns in my cold frame when I inadvertently left it open while we away one weekend.
I had a gathering here last August, and my friend Maureen decided to sit out on the back deck. She started counting the bunnies she could see in the neighboring years and immediately counted over a dozen. Three of them were perched outside the garden fence, looking in, yearning for the tender green things. They ate my newer flower garden in the front of our house to the ground last year. We could not sustain the plants long enough to establish them firmly. tim graciously donated some fencing that we will keep there for several years until the plants are vigorous enough to withstand the rabbits.
A good chicken wire fence solves many problems. We had the fencing you mentioned, Renee, surrounding our back yard vegetable garden until 3 summers ago when we caught a young, genius bunny climbing the darn thing up to a large enough hole to slither through. So now there is chicken wire.
It works.
LikeLiked by 2 people
That was a determined bunny.
LikeLike
Indeed!🐰
LikeLike
See PJ’s announcement at the end of yesterday’s post. Looks to me like a Baboonish Field Trip is in order.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes. The Alpha Baboon (aka Dale Connelly) is involved.
LikeLike
Tough question. I did have boundary problems, but the fix was far more complicated than putting up rabbit-proof netting.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Boundaries are difficult in a small town when you do what I do for a living for as long as I have done it. It is hard to maintain our privacy sometimes. It will be a relief when I retire and we move to a new town where no one knows us and where I don’t know the life stories of hundreds of the residents. Over the past 19 years I have seen over 1000 people at my agency. Multiply that by the number of family members those 1000 people have, and you get an idea of the number of stories and secrets I know.
LikeLiked by 5 people
Yes. I live in a large metro in part for the privacy. And I still encounter people and secrets you would hardly believe. 🤭
LikeLike
When I lived in lower North Mankato and had extensive flower gardens, I would trap a dozen rabbits a year, Once I caught two adults in the same trap. They were crowded. I always hauled the rabbits out to a woodsy rural county park. I wonder how they adjusted.
I am perhaps too conscious of social boundaries. When I do cross one, I feel guilty for days after.
Well, surprise, surprise. Big time medical day today.
LikeLike
Good luck with that.
LikeLike
I am afraid that removing our two bunnies to the country would result in automatic death by coyote. On the other hand, I might relocate the bunnies if there were lots of them.
LikeLike
get well
LikeLike
Good fences have their place, but we’ve discovered they can also be a double-edged sword.
When we moved into our house in 1979, our back yard had a neighbor-friendly – but ugly – chain-link fence separating us from one neighbor. Unfortunately we soon discovered that while the fence was neighbor-friendly, the neighbor wasn’t.
The back of the property facing the alley lacked a fence, so kids on their way to or from the Boys and Girls Club a few blocks away, or on their way home from school, routinely cut through our yard to the street in front of it, strewing candy wrappers, juice boxes or pop cans along the way not to mention trampling what few flowers I had.
There was no fence separating our property from the neighbors to the west. In those days, clumps of wild Daisies had spontaneously popped up all over the lawn both in front and in back of the house. We liked them, so we mowed around them, resulting in small islands of white flowers rather casually dotting the lawn. Neighbor apparently didn’t like that, and mowed them all down one day in preparation for oldest daughter’s graduation from high school party. Never asked if that was OK, never talked to us about it, just did it. Something had to be done.
We decided to put up a wooden privacy fence to completely fence in the back yard. It was important to us that the fence looked the same from both sides, didn’t want the neighbors on either side to be looking at an obvious back side of a fence. Everybody would be happy, we figured, but we were wrong. Then the unforeseen consequences of putting up the section of the fence on the west began accruing.
There’s about a four foot space between their garage and our fence. That neighbor has always been a pack rat. It was a rare day when he wouldn’t come home with a bicycle, tricycle, motor scooter, broken down playground equipment or something else that he was going to repair. Soon that space became the dumping ground for all this stuff, that plus all the used tires and large cans of used motor oil resulting from one of his sons’ backyard mechanic business. We talked with him repeatedly about this, but the problem persisted. Calling the city’s complaint line seemed to be the only solution. They’d send out an inspector, neighbor would receive a written order to clean out the mess within a given time frame, and they’d comply in a mad scramble a day or two before the deadline. This cycle has repeated itself with some regularity over the course of thirty-five years. Sigh!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I want to post good news on the issue foremost in our hearts: the MPR raccoon made it to the top of the skyscraper and is now safe in a trap, anticipating his (or her) release in a more appropriate environment.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I don’t know about the MPR raccoon (haven’t had the news on for a few days, I guess) – say more, please.
LikeLike
People in downtown St Paul were stunned yesterday by the sight of a smallish raccoon scaling a 23-story office building, clinging to the rough-texture walls and occasionally resting by sleeping on a window ledge. The fear, of course, was that the ‘coon might slip and fall to its death. The story went viral. Last night when it got dark the little climber was near the top. It is now safe in a Havahart live trap.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Mary Lucia, from the Current, did a nice recap of events yesterday, so it was prior to the safe capture.
LikeLiked by 2 people
We had a 7 foot fence in Robbinsdale back meadow to keep out the deer, but we eventually discovered what y’all are talking about – had to go around the bottom with chicken wire, sometimes an extra layer above the bottom one, to keep out the bunnies. I think I posted about all those bunnies when I wrote about the evenings on the Screen Porch – by then we were friends with them again. 🙂
We took down most of the white plastic fence, that was here when we moved in, between our lawn-now-veg garden and our neighbor’s driveway. Put up some low square mesh fence we’d gotten from tim, which does the job for neighbor’s dogs, and the few rabbits that get past their cat. Last plastic fencing on the alley side is opaque and high, and I’d like to replace it with something more organic, with just a little see-through (or see-over-the-top) – I want to be able to interact with the neighbors, see their birdfeeders, etc. – know what’s going on in the alley… 🙂 We just had a block party (this past weekend, and now know more of the people on our alley.
LikeLiked by 2 people
tim jones
>
LikeLiked by 1 person
Speaking of tim jones, I was helping my mom on her computer yesterday. Saw an entry for “Savong” and $800. Hmmm, who are you paying $800 too mom?? Nope, typo. “Saving”. Ah.
Should have known that when I saw “Blie Cross Blue Shiuld”.
Told her about you tim.
Mom has trouble with her vision. She’s having no trouble managing her finances.
LikeLiked by 2 people
see and i are ioposite
LikeLiked by 2 people
I haven’t got my rabbit fence up yet this year. I put up the plastic snow fence to keep the chickens and deer out as soon as I started the garden. And I know I have to get the rabbit fence up before it’s too late… one of these days.
Knowing me, it will be a day too late.
When there was more cattle around the neighborhood, fences were more important. A few areas of the township they are still important.
It doesn’t matter how nice you are… if your cattle are frequently in the neighbors field — or walking up a road — you’ll get a bad rap in the neighborhood. We got one of those places. Great people, bad at fencing.
Course, those old barb wire fences are often rough property lines. They don’t often follow the actual survey but they’re a general idea.
And there are a lot of laws about fencing. The town board can even get involved if they have to and it becomes their job to decide who’s fence it is and who needs to maintain it. Thankfully, I only remember having to deal with a fence 1 time in 20 years and I think eventually the neighbors worked it out.
https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/344
LikeLiked by 1 person
Wow, who knew, Ben?
LikeLike
This spring I put a two foot section of a low decorative metal fence in the flower bed by my front stoop. I put it up in hopes of keeping our mail carrier from trampling my lilies of the valley as they were just coming up. Access to the mailbox isn’t difficult, but it does require that he scale two steps. You’d think he’d take the hint, but no, he stepped right over it.
So, Hans volunteered to put up something a little more difficult to traverse. He hammered a couple of tall bamboo stakes and a three of other tall metal stakes into the ground about a foot apart. Would you believe the mail carrier squeezed in between two stakes that were not close enough? We had to connect the stakes by stringing twine between them in order to keep him out. By then he had trampled the flowers so badly that they have still not recovered. This is one mail carrier that is not getting a Christmas present from me.
LikeLike
Either he’s a little dense, or just very focused on his mail delivery.
LikeLike
Or possibly a jerk or worse. I don’t appreciate having to have that ugly contraption in that flower bed, so I’m swinging by the post office he works out of today to file a complaint. Surely mail carriers aren’t authorized to wade through people’s flower beds?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Who crossed a boundry here?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I mentioned that we removed a fence between our (very close) neighbors’ driveway and our “yard”. This means that if they are outside, it’s almost like we must talk with each other, we’re that close. This is only a problem if one wants to have some outside quiet time. We each will sometimes sit in a chair with our back to next-door, but I think we’d all probably be ok with a half-fence at the back, or something.
LikeLike
OT – For the bakers on this trail.
Jerabek’s Bakery was a long-time West Side institution, they were renowned for all kinds of baked goodies. They closed several years ago.
A couple of days ago, a friend posted a message on FB that she’d love to have the recipe for Jerabek’s Rhubarb Bars. I contacted Mellisa (who is a friend), the daughter of the couple that founded Jerabek’s Bakery, and who herself owned and operated it for years, and asked if she’d be willing to share. Not unsurprisingly (she’s a very generous person) she agreed to do so. Also not unsurprisingly, she needed a little prodding to actually do it.
As it turns out, Mellissa is contemplating writing and publishing a book with some of Jerabek’s favorite recipes, and the Rhubarb Bars are among them. For that reason she doesn’t want the recipe shared “widely” but only to a few select people who agree to not broadcast it.
I’m willing to share this recipe with any baboon who would like to have it, and who promises to not share it widely.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I would love a recipe for rhubarb bars. I have lovely rhubarb and I only talk to Baboons.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Me too – what Renee said – you could email us with it…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Put me on the list. I have a bumper crop of rhubarb here. Even the rhubarb margaritas aren’t enough to use it up🍹
LikeLiked by 1 person
And my lips are sealed.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I have to maintain boundaries here, so I don’t share much with anyone.
LikeLiked by 2 people
have to move out of town because of all she knows about the rhubarb community
LikeLike
Went to pain clinic. He debated what part of my back to inject. He decided on lumbar. Shots in lumbar 3 months ago failed. Shots in neck failed two weeks ago. He decided on lumbar. I got home and read on the report a disease I have no one has ever told me. Failed laminnectomy syndrome. Exactly describes me. Why has no one ever told me this, and not be a printout? Perhaps because there is not a lot of hope for cure. This place does not listen to me and does not communicate with me. But it is sort of my last resort.
LikeLike