Completed Fences Will Make Good Neighbors

Today was ‘tear down the fence’ day. Joe removed part of our fence that we have wanted repaired for the past three years. Our neighbor sharing the fence has been promising to do it for the past three years. He had specific requirements that added substantially to the cost and he and his work buddies were going to ‘get it done.’ Last July we told the neighbor we weren’t going to wait anymore. We got quotes.

The neighbor wanted the posts to be metal that he had already purchased. The fence companies would not guarantee the work with the metal posts. Finally, in January, we told him we were going to have the fence fixed as we were moving. We shared our most recent quote with him. He said he’d do it himself and picked a date of February 19^th. He’s taking a vacation day.

Joe offered to tear down the fence. The neighbor wanted the wood for kindling. Today Joe tore out that fence, removed nails, prepared the land for the new fence. I scribed the old wood to kindling size and Joe cut it with a power saw.

Now our neighbor has no barriers to installing the fence. He sent a picture of the wood for the new fence last night, so we know that he is on schedule for the February 19^th installation.

Worst case scenario is that he ends up having his vacation days cancelled and the fence isn’t done as planned. We are not paying him for our share of the wood until the fence is completed. At this point, I’m counting on his wife to nag him if she wants her backyard privacy. We’ll take all of the help we can get.

Mending Wall

by ROBERT FROST

 

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father's saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’