The Great Fence of San Simeon

On Saturday, May 31, 2014, the Great Fence of San Simeon was completed.

As the last gate was being covered with hardware cloth to complete the compound enclosure, sure enough, a large lizard had wandered inside and was unable to tunnel or climb out -- a good indication of the value of the fence.

We have nothing against lizards. They eat bugs. I teased and chased it out with a piece of PVC pipe and the garden hose.

Which reminds me of the great walls that we humans erect to keep our kind in and the other kind out. Like the Great Wall of China, the Berlin Wall, the Israeli West Bank Wall, and the other great fence in Arizona that we justify in the name of Homeland Security.

Then we have the walls we build in our minds, like Fox Noise and MSNBC. But enough of comparing people with varmints.

We hope to invite many people into our new garden. And they will also be free to leave.

Our great fence isn't a wall to divide people against each other. It's a fence to keep out rabbits, rats, chipmunks, squirrels, and javelinas.

Odds are, the smaller mammals can climb the fence, and we'll need bird netting for when anything gets close to being ripe, but the fence does give a sense of insular protection.

Perhaps it's a false sense, like the great rabbit-proof fence of Western Australia.

Still, it's an aesthetic of what can be done with an long and heavy iron pike, lots of skin-piercing aviary wire, nasty treated wood (warped as they are), ready-made (thank God) metal gate frames, a rake, concrete and plastic ties.

My work is largely done, although paths to two of the gates need improving. Now it's Shari's turn. She gets to turn the desert into a vegetable paradise. So far, she loves the morning watering of her little green babies.