Outsmarting the Code Officials

In case you haven't figured it out by now, my projects in the garden involve all the infrastructure the garden requires to work and look good. Steven, of course, is all about the plants themselves and maintaining them and making sure they thrive. Me, i'm more interstitial exostructure (fences, decks, walls, walks, etc.) while Steven is cellular endo (plants, roots, digging, weeding). I've been thinking about this as Steven complains i never weed. Well, i do, he just never notices. And i never weed an entire area in one sitting like he does. And HE never is concerned with anything beyond the plants themselves.

So, our silly little town city government won't allow us to have a picket fence in our front garden. We aren't sure exactly why, something about being on a principal street and not wanting to close things in. Well it makes me mad. So i've been using our gobs and gobs of wood lath removed from the kitchen during renovation to make little tiny fences. This prototype panel is about 14 or 15 inches high and 24 wide, and just pushes into the soil. I took each scrap of lath and ripped longitudinally into 3 equal strips to start, so each member is quite small in section, like 3/8" square. I'll remove the nails as i go, and carefully arrange the cut sides this way, the plaster stained sides that, cut all the tops at a 45 degree angle so they won't soak up too much rain, etc. Now i have 30 or so more of these to go!