The Fence

The fence surrounding the tree in my backyard is deteriorating. I don’t know how long it’s been going on, but it must have been years. I can guess what it originally looked like. It is intact everywhere else in the yard. The bottom half is made up of wooden slats, about three inches wide and one inch apart. The middle section is separated by a thick block of wood, stretching the length of each segment. On top, they nailed wooden lattice which, in most parts of the yard, have been taken over by ivy, creating a little sanctuary of green. Each corner is supported by large wooden posts. The wood hasn’t been stained or painted. I don’t think it was every treated for outside use. Some of it appears to be rotting.

The post supporting the corner where the tree has grown back leans out toward our house. I never noticed how bad it was before. We were outside, taking a look at the yard, getting ready to start our garden and put out some chairs with the nice weather when I came across the bungee. Our fence is held together by a bright blue bungee cord. It wraps around the falling post, anchoring itself to the sturdy section untouched by the growing tree. It must be fairly new. Its color is too bright, too clean to have been there for long.

The wooden slats on the bottom half are almost all broken. The new tree stumps growing from the old own curved out of the side, pushing into the slats until they gave. Where the hole should be from the missing slats lays the lattice that used to be on top. It isn’t attached to anything anymore. The nails popped out of the wooden frame long ago, when the tree grew tall and out into the yard. It looks as if someone arranged the lattice on the ground where it is now. A quick fix to the hole the tree has formed.

With the simple fixes to large structural issues in our fence, I wonder if it was all worth it to begin with. Cutting the tree down to build where they did was another one of their quick fixes. They didn’t bother to do the research. Didn’t actually kill the tree when cutting it down. They didn’t seem to care enough about the fence to fully remove the stump. And now, they don’t care to cut the tree back. Or care to actually fix the fence. The owner of the house seems perfectly content allowing the tree to continue to grow and break the fence down more and more. It makes me wonder why they even bothered to cut it down the first time around. Why not just build around it? If they had done that, nothing would be broken. Now all that’s left is a busted fence and this deformed tree.