Farmer Rigging It - minus the bailing wire

Saturday morning at 5:22 Matt and Kelsey headed down to Salina. Kendal and I slept until, well, I won't say how late. Anyway I have had this problem with what to do with my clematis that is so happy. It has outgrown it's trellis for a few years now and I needed to figure out something to keep it climbing. Last year I did the farmer rig thing and very sophisticatedly hooked some bird netting from the deck railing up to the rain gutter and attached it with a paper clip. Yes, a paper clip. It honestly worked great. The clematis covered the netting in no time and it just looking like greenery was magically climbing skyward into my rain gutter.

Well, I decided this year I needed to be a little more constructive with my trellis situation. I asked Derek, my 15 year old neighbor if he would weld me something I would draw up for him out of rebar and he said yes. I was telling my brother in law Jared about this. He is a welder by trade. He said there is no way that I could have a trellis made out of REBAR! I explained to him that it would be covered in no time, it was cheap, and it would be good practice for Derek. He said no way. He then offered to make me a trellis. I changed my mind and asked him to make me a walk under arbor for another part of my yard that would be so pretty. He assured me that it would NOT be welded out of rebar!
So, Matt was outside on Friday night enjoying a few minutes on the deck and I said "Matt, what am I going to do with this happy clematis? It has outgrown its trellis." He said, "I don't know, make some kind of wood thing for it to climb on and block the view of the road."
That is all I needed. I have secretly been planning a wooden trellis type thing in my mind all spring, but it needed to be his idea. So Saturday while he was fixing fence, cleaning ditches, herding cows or whatever he was doing in Salina, I was driving his truck to the lumber and hardware store for my project.

Kendal was such a big help. She splashed the deck stain all over the boards, the grass, her sister's brand new shoes, our legs, the cat, etc. She grunted with me when I drove the screws in and ran out of UMPH toward the end, she watched me mess up a couple of cuts with the skil saw and said "OH MAN" when I did, she played in the strawberry patch and squished the berries while I nimbly danced around the berries while digging a hole and setting screws on the outside of the deck, she climbed to the VERY top of the ladder just so she could jingle the wind chime and give me a heart attack, and she had a great day. The tree I planted 4 years ago is finally big enough to give a little shade in the heat of the day if you sit in the right spot and shift every 20 minutes as the sun goes across the sky! She sat in the shade (it was a gorgeous day Saturday) and ate a popsicle for about 3 1/2 minutes and then she was off again. My friend Jen stole her for about an hour and it was pretty nice to not have her painting the cat and scaling the ladder.

It doesn't look like much, but there it is and it is done. It is going to work pretty nicely. Thanks Mom and Dad for all of the tools you gave Matt for Christmas. I do know what you can get ME this year - a tool belt. That would have been nice, my pockets were overflowing. I told Matt that this was his Father's Day present. He looked at me weird because he could care less about the yard, then I told him it was HIS gift because he didn't have to do it.