Slinkies

Do you remember slinkies? Of course you do. They still sell them and I just bought two, in black.

Not for my granddaughter, although maybe when she's older I'll get her one and we can spend hours together "walking" it down the steep steps in the terraced hillside in her back yard. That's for the future.

For right now, I got slinkies for my garden. This is genius: slinky toys fit over the coyote fence posts like they were made to do just that.

If you slide one end over a post and anchor the other end in a pot below, you have a stretchable trellis for a  clinging vine to curl around and climb.

My plan is to put a clematis vine in the brown urn by the fence and have it climb the fence and then scramble over the fence top to drape over the other side. But how to get it to attach itself up the face of the fence on its way over and then scramble along the top?

This is too easy. No nails, no fasteners, no built trellis construction or expensive pot pyramid. No vine wires screwed into the fenceposts.

Just a child's $12 toy. Flexible, endlessly moveable as needed, almost unseen against the fence. I'm already thinking of other uses I can make of more slinkies in my garden, they just seem so darn useful and cheap.

Here's what the fence and gate will look like in their summer clothes, but there will be a fragrant flowery vine in that brown urn, climbing the fence, supported by a slinky.

I confess, this slinky hack for climbing vines was not my own idea. I saw it here on the internet, and it's inspired.

This is what comes of too much time in the house in winter during a pandemic, with an internet connection.