MeatHenge Labs has grown another room. Not so good for the rainy season, but just fine for the other three. Count yourself lucky if you have some kind of shade in your back/side yard for the summer. Ours is a wide open area with sun for all. Which may be fine for tomatoes & flowers, but for humans it really burns. Now we have wide open shade, delish.

Our home is quite small, if it were for sale the description might read, “cozy” or “quaint”. Which means when we have guests over, it is to the yard we go. The last few seasons I had a 10′ x 8′ portable (Martha Stewart) awning right off the kitchen. It was large enough to house most of my grill and maybe a half dozen people plus a little round table (wooden cable spool). Yeah well, we had quite a blustery winter and this blust carried my awning (including but not limited to the 4 concrete cinder blocks holding it down) up 7 feet in the air, flipped it over and tossed it 20 feet out in to the street. Thank goodness my wife’s car was unscathed.
This means for the last 8 months or so, we’ve had NO shade in our Barbecue Sitting area. This last week saw a new awning installed, far cooler and a damned site larger. It’s 20’x10′, just like adding on an entire room. The tarp that came with it was really dark and kinda depressing. Meathead had wanted to build a Thatched Hut there anyway, so why not remove the tarp and replace it with something ‘thatched’. Reed fencing was cheap and sorta looked thatchy. So with Meathead’s help, 200 feet of bailing wire, a weeks time, we had our awning back.
Such a treat. There’s enough light for pretty much any plant, vine or small tree we could want. Yet the sun doesn’t burn your skin. Very nice indeed.

notice the speckledy lighting on the ground there
After the roof was nearly lashed on, I thought it would be nice to have a fountain under there (a water feature!). I already had the statue that my grandmother had in her garden 30 years ago, why not use that one? I don’t know, it seemed easier to buy a pre-made fountain and just plug it in. E and I went to the hardware store to see what new fountains we could find. Yeah well, those things are 250 to 350 dollars. It seemed a bit much for a dumb fountain. As we were making our way though the store I noticed they had plastic liners for wooden wine barrels or large tin buckets. Well, thar’s the pond. All I needed was a pump and some hose. They had that too. So for 80 bux I had it all, pump included.

I believe the only downside is that the fountain is directly underneath the bathroom window. What this means is, from inside the house, it sounds as though someone is peeing 24 hours a day.
In any case, everything really turned out well and din’t cost a mint to buy and install. I expect the inexpensive ($19 for a 6’x15′ section) reed fencing won’t last more than a season or two. That’s fine, I’ll use bamboo next time and get a different look for the new year! What fun.
Xo Xo