Snappyfriends youth and garden loom

They say on hot summer nights you can sit in the front porch rocking chairs and hear the corn grow. That's how I feel about Charlie. He's 4 1/2 now and I feel like he's growing so fast I can hear him grow. He's my snappyfriends youth assignment. He lives three hours away and we miss him terribly.

OK, here's the weekend project we spent last weekend on. But first, you have to understand, Patient Husband isn't called Patient for no reason. He definitely got the short end of the stick in this partnership. Let's just say I'm not the easy one. I admit it.
I saw this garden loom in a magazine and asked him if "we" could please build it. If we did then I wouldn't bug him about a barn or goats or chickens anymore - though I'll miss that!
You also have to understand that we are sorely lacking in the tool department. When we decide to "make" something the neighbors gather to watch. What we use for a screwdriver or hammer or vice or even a pencil would make any man cringe. But we cobble things together and somehow make it work.

Good Neighbor Bill, came to help with this step, digging the post holes in clay, the levelling, the loan of a level, drill and grips. About the only thing we contributed was the shovel and the posts and the idea! Patient Husband is the one in the pics, though. I kept after him about trompling my lavender plants. This particular part of the lavender bed is where I put the baby plants and they were fighting for their lives.

Thank goodness for bifocals!

Ta Da!!

The one I saw in a magazine was 3 feet wide by 6 feet tall. Patient Husband thought that if 3 x 6 was good, then 4 x 8 was better so that's what this is. I fretted and fretted when the frame was up that it was just TOO big, but after a couple of days I decided it's good. It's a big house and a big yard and proportionally it works. As long as that pear tree behind it is alive, you really can't see it from the road right behind it, so it does blend in. It's pretty cool.

It's strung with simple garden jute and I completely depleted the supply of jute in our small town. I'll have to go to another city to buy more to finish the right side. But it's done enough for the picture to show you all. My daughter has some roving from her spinning days I'm going to use when the birds are building nests. I'll string grapevines, flowers, cattails, whatever I can find now. String berries, hang whatever I find that strikes me. It will be an ever changing work in progress.

This is taken from the front porch so you see it doesn't look THAT big. This is all lavender in the front yard. Both sides of the walk.