This last week saw me unable to ride my bike outdoors as I attempted to regrow some skin. This meant I had to take the bus every day because the train was not going all the way into downtown due to road construction that affected the tracks. And because road construction season is in full swing, the bus route is also detoured in numerous places and what would normally be a 40-minute ride often took 60-90 minutes depending on whether it was morning or afternoon. Brutal. And so I was late home and exhausted every single day.

The week ahead looks only slightly better. While my knee is healing up quite nicely and does not prevent me from cycling, my left hand is still quite a mess. The fingers and palm of my hand are blue and purple from bruising and the backside of my hand is yellow from bruising. But the worst part remains the missing skin, the largest patch is about the size of a quarter and is a solid scab. It is healing, but slowly and the opening and closing of my hand pulls the skin and makes me say, ouch!

Unable to bike and unable to garden either. I can’t get a glove on my hand to protect it and I can’t use it so I’ve been telling Bookman to do things like add mulch to the potatoes. If I am careful, I am able to pick the black raspberries that are suddenly coming ripe. Oh, are these delicious! We have some red raspberries too but I love the black ones so much more. I worried in the spring since we hacked back the patch quite a lot that we wouldn’t get many this year. Ha! I was so wrong and I have never been happier about not being right.

The currants are also getting ripe. We have black currants and red. Both are still small so the black currants will probably be added to baked things and the red will be a very small batch of jelly that will likely be gone after a couple pieces of toast. But that’s ok, still something to look forward to!

The Dashwoods have been fairly well behaved this week. Though we had planted a few new things in the chicken garden this spring and had thought we protected them, we didn’t do a good enough job of it and this week the remaining plant was demolished by oblivious hens.

I am also growing scarlet runner beans up the side of the shed in the chicken garden again this year since they were such a success last year. They were doing great. Were. I had them protected by row cover fabric but an extra breezy day and some lucky scratching by a chicken, created an opening to get behind the fabric. By the time I discovered it, there was only one runner bean left. I have to come up with some better, more secure barriers.

Bookman took a good look at the garden gate we temporarily repaired to keep Marianne out. When we moved in to the house 15 years ago we built this gate, a little arbor and trellis fencing along the back of the garden. Well in addition to the slats on the lattice gate coming loose, we’ve been noticing some of the fence posts had developed a wobble. We figured we just had to add some concrete to secure the posts. Bookman’s inspection revealed that one of the posts, an older one that was part of a fence that was there when we moved in, is actually rotted at the bottom and if a good hard wind hit it just right he is certain it would take the whole arbor down.

This is not a project we have been happily planning on doing, but now that we have to we are taking the opportunity to rethink the whole fence/gate situation. We built the arbor originally to grow grapes on but the grape thing didn’t pan out as the grapes kept dying over the winter. We tried a rose with no luck. For about five years we had a gorgeous honeysuckle climbing the arbor and then for no apparent reason the whole thing just died. After that we tried a trumpet vine with no luck and a number of other perennial vines that all died as well. So we planted morning glories and they did magnificently. They did so well they spread themselves throughout the entire garden and have now become a noxious annual weed we can’t seem to get rid of.

Today I have been scrolling through Google images looking for ideas and found so many creative gates that are absolutely gorgeous and completely wrong for my garden however much I might wish I had the space and the style that fit them. I did find a few with great potential. What it will eventually come out looking like is anybody’s guess at this point. It will either end up really plain and unassuming, or some crazy DIY gate from salvaged materials that we cobble together.

Bookman and I both have Tuesday off for Independence Day and while we already have a bunch of other things planned, I think we have to try and squeeze in at least getting started on this project. No doubt it will involve swearing, some bickering disagreements, and a number of trips to the hardware store, if it is even open. Wish us luck!