My plot gates were naff. Lets be honest.

They didn’t open, and when they eventually did, bits of glass rained down of your from above. They hid me away from the world and they stopped nice flatcaps and ladies from saying hello to me.

I think they reckon I am as antisocial as MrT looks, and he isn’t exactly a bundle of joy and sparkles!

Large, heavy, stuck, and collapsing gates – not to mention the broken glass panes

So went went on another internet mission, and came up with some replacements.

Off MrT went to fetch them for me. Poor suffering bloke. Since then he has made matters worse by asking me to get married, god knows why. He must be a sucker for punishment.

God knows why he is so happy!

Here he is with his new acquisitions. Look at that smile…It’s almost as if he KNEW he was going to leave me to put these up by myself. Oh wait…He did.

Little did I know that this wasn’t a simple replacement job. Oh no, it was a whole digging, lifting, trapping fingers job.

Turns out my gate post was rotten. So off I went on another trip to the DIY shop. Its a good job i have a big car isn’t it?

I had the most embarrassing trip to the DIY shop. If you have ever been to the shop in leggings and a tank top, you will know that all of a sudden there are people there to assist you. Well I didn’t know this (being the sheltered little one I am) so I immediately went into Strong Independant Woman mode. As the shop assistants gathered, I tried to pick up a bag of postcrete. As soon as I stood upright, I keeled over backwards. Big explosion of dust and a crunch later and they are all keeling over too, expect for they were doing it in laughter. I could’ve had the world swallow me up right there. So i let them help me. Two new posts and a few back of postcrete later and I was back at my allotment to hide from the world.

A women may be misinformed, mislead, unclear, misguided, and even downright stupid..but she is never ever wrong.

By this point on a Saturday morning, all the flatcaps had finished their shed-fryups and had surfaced to see what That New Girl was up to today. So around they stood while I used all of my embarrassment adrenaline to rip out a fence post. I was like the hulk that day. Nothing could’ve stopped me.

Mr AcrossTheLane tootled over with a funny shaped spade and ‘let me borrow it’. I thanked him and waited until he left before googling it. Turns out it was a post hole spade, and it helped a bunch! I recommend them to anyone who has a big fencing project on, but I do have to say that I don’t think I would’ve used it since.

Suddenly my phone began buzzing, and Mother Dearest on the other side wanted to come and see my new chickens.
“Brilliant”, I thought, “just in time to hold my posts”.
So up rocks my mum and stepdad, oblivious of what lie ahead for them.

A hour later, my posts were in, and were plumb, and were nowhere near matching in height, but who cares. I can be flippant about these things, I was too tired to carry on digging as I had hit rubble.

So we sat and had a little relax and a brew, chilling out with my chickens.

Strutting her stuff

After Mum had made off with my eggs, I gave up resisting temptation and hung my gates. I did install a bar across the top of the two posts to make sure that the posts didn’t pull inwards while the concrete was still hardening up nicely. I could wait any longer though as I really didn’t want to leave my plot open and accessible all night as we often get kids hopping over to go ferreting through the shed and none of mine are locked yet!

I probably wouldn’t recommend it to anyone else, because it could’ve gone horribly horribly wrong if the posts hadn’t set fully yet, but do what I say and not as I do.

These gates already had different hinges to the old gate, and I had never done these before. It was pretty easy though, I put the bottom hinge on the post, offered a gate up to it and marked where the second hinge sat, and then screwed it in! Simples!

Soon enough, both gates were hung! They weren’t level and they certainly weren’t perfect, but they were our and they were beautiful.

They are up!

You can just about see Mr AcrossTheLane’s plot there. Look how infuriatingly perfect it is… grumble. One day, eventually, mine will be that pretty.

In the meantime I might settle with just cutting those hedges though…