Cage Corral

  Anyone who's grown tomatoes has probably dealt with a tomato cage.  These flimsy rounds of wire are a gardener's best friend when they're doing their job but in the off season they are the delinquents of the garden shed, defying most storage attempts and finding every possible way to get wound up in the garden tools so that they almost have to be cut out of the shed when it's time to plant again.  Added to these trials is the rampant growth of creeping grasses and vines in Florida that ensnare anything left on the ground within a few days.

(yes, there's a fence under there)

     Completing the shed has enabled me to get all the tools, sporting goods, fishing gear, bicycles, etc. out of my house but I also have several garden panels and tomato cages that needed to be stored away from the grassy clutches of my yard.  I took a second look at my stack of reclaimed 4x4 fenceposts and decided to build a cage corral at the back of the shed, utilizing a rail that Mike started months ago before we changed the eventually location of the shed.

     I puzzled it out in my mind and decided the format pictured above was the easiest and most attractive plan.  The corral is 4' wide so I used the posts I had already cut for sections of my walkways; that's an ongoing project that I will return to some other time.

     

     It only took me a few hours to put it together and it was an enormous help to have all my tools handy in the shed instead of dragging everything out of the house and running back and forth for more screws, etc., as I've always had to do in the past.  

     The above photo is the "magazine shot", like the photos of models who don't seem to have a single dimple of cellulite.

     Here's the truth:

     Yes, it's a bit crooked and it's not quite level, but it's solid and was the last project I needed to complete before turning my sites fully back inside for awhile.  I've got a yearning to switch on the utility light over my work desk and fashion some more fossil jewelry, collages, and wood trinket boxes.

The holidays are coming!