It’s DONE!
MargaretWhen we lost the Scamper in 2007 we decided that we would continue family tradition and plant a rosebush for him. So Scamper’s ashes, his food bowl, a special favorite treat, and his favorite toy were planted under a climbing rosebush that spring.
I’d found a metalworker at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show who had built a trellis that I really fancied out of scroll work cast iron. When I bought it it had flat feet – a problem for those of us wanting to put the trellis in the ground instead of in a house – so the metal worker welded a couple of 18″ pieces of rebar on to each of the corners. Before we planted Scamper’s rose I had dug four holes, mixed up four bags of concrete, and planted the trellis in them. It would not, I figured, go ANYWHERE.
And when Scrum died a little over a year later we gave him his Egyptian burial on the other side of the trellis and planted another climbing rose.
And it was lovely for 10 years.
Until last fall when I thought to myself… “Self, are those climbing roses leaning more than they were last spring?” And, of course, the trellis had had enough motion over the years that the cast iron center bar had fatigued at a spot just above the feet (a.k.a. at the base of my now 10 and 11 year old climbing roses) and had started to rust through.
Shit.
So I bought four 6′ pieces of rebar, pounded them 2′ into the ground and attached the trellis to them with 2″ ratchet straps so that it wouldn’t fall over during the winter and spring and planned to replace the trellis over the summer.
Today I finished. 🙂
My grandfather was and my father is the type of person who can build things. I’ve never really been very good at it so I’m immensely smug about the fact that I dug the site, built the forms, set the blocks, poured the concrete, and did all the woodworking (sanding/shaping/staining/finishing) and assembly myself.
Because I am my father’s daughter and my grandfather’s granddaughter this sucker is STURDY. The uprights are varnished, pressure treated 4″ x 4″s bolted into 8″ square 20 pound pier blocks which are, in turn, sunk in 2″ of concrete. The horizontals are 2″ x 6″s bolted to the uprights with 8″ X 3/4″ bolts. And all of the rest of the attaching was done with 3″ deck screws.
Because I am my own person, however, and not necessarily just an extension of my paternal bloodline, I can legitimately point out that the two uprights on the left side are about 1″ closer together than the ones on the right side. That the stain on the horizontals is “fruitwood” and the stain on the cross bars is “golden oak” because I didn’t check to see that I had enough of the “fruitwood” colored stain. And that I haven’t put in the cross bars between the horizontals (and may never do so) because since the uprights are about 1″ different from left to right that means the horizontals are too and right now I’m really disinclined to cut progressively larger bits off of the rest of the crossbars that I manufactured to make them fit correctly.
I think it’s a pretty good job anyway.