When the fence was replaced, we changed the design somewhat. Zone 8, around the base of the General, had a retaining wall built and filled in. That meant that the fence went from 6 feet tall down to about 4 feet where the retaining wall was, since the fence was put at the old ground level, not the filled in higher level. The neighbor on the other side of the fence had asked if it could be 6 feet, at least, for all of it.
That meant that the fence runs along the top of the retaining wall, at 6 feet, and then suddenly drops two feet when we hit the retaining wall between zone 8 and zone 7. to avoid the sudden drop, we switch to an 8 foot fence and then slowly decrease the height, so that it gets back to 6 feet when we reach the corner of the back yard.
However, the fence people kept the fence going level well after the drop-off from zone 8 to zone 7. Since the ground level continued to drop, that meant that their 8 foot fence pickets did not reach the ground, and it left a gap under part of the fence. Particularly when the stone work under the fence dropped again at the low end of the Blue Rock Pool.
As a temporary measure, we put two fence pickets horizontally at this point to cover the gap. But this was meant as just a temporary fix.
In addition there was another uncomfortable gap in the low end of the Bamboo Grove, where the stone work apparently is not level.
And I had noticed when I was clearing the Bamboo Grove for the fence work, that the bamboo was trying to send roots over the stone work, to escape it's confinement to the Bamboo Grove.
So my solution was to raise the stone work to (a) meet the new bottom of the fence, and (b) prevent the bamboo from putting roots over the stone work.
Since the base stone work is there, this just requires applying another course of stones along the outer two sides of the Bamboo Grove. It took two trips to Whittlsey to get the stones (320 pounds the first time and 260 pounds the second). We cleaned off the old stone work, and laid out the new stones.
Then we mixed up some mortar and mortared the new stones in place.
The new work is two additional courses of stone next to the Blue Rock Pool,
reducing to one additional course from there to the corner.
In the corner itself, we used a small 6x6 block which happened to fit the remaining space.
At this point, we needed more mortar and more stones, so after a couple days, we were able to again clean off the existing stones, and lay out new ones.
and then mortar them in place.
As expected, we had to cut the last one to fit the space available.
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