I do use simple garden twine. When I first moved here, I put nails, evenly spaced, on the top of the top stile, and the bottom of the bottom, with an inch or so sticking up. Every spring I run the string top to bottom in "v's", wrapping the string once or twice around each nail. At the end of the summer, I simply cut the twine, bundle the vines in the string and toss the whole things in the trash. Ocassionally, a string will snap during the summer, but it's pretty easy to patch

The big autumn clematis that goes up the back steps grows on a long length of snow fencing. The top and the bottom of the lengths are wrapped around a 2"x2". the top is wired to the top of the fire escape, but the bottom simply hangs. The 2"x2" gives it enough weight and rigidity to hang well. (But it's kind of a pain to pull the strands of dead vine out in the spring.)

Hope that helps. Don't know what to tell you about your "assistant". In my yard, I'm simply the slave with thumbs....

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Alison,
Your assistant looks like it needs another bottle of beer; low wages and fringe benefits makes for a lazy worker.

Jim, I think that you're looking at the foreman there, not the assistant! *grin*

I had two cats at the old house, along with the dog. The former stayed with my ex, the latter came with me to the new house. The cats definitely were in control of the house... the dog... us... and anything else they came across. On the other hand, they did NOT steal my tomatoes out of the garden like the dog does! :)

Alison, thanks for the vine/twine information. I like the idea of leaving the nails in there and just cutting down the rest each fall--I wouldn't have thought about that as an option.

Re: the snow fencing... does the sweet autumn clematis cover it completely so that it doesn't show? I have some access to black snow fencing for free, so I might do something similar to train it up the fence... hmm.

Oh, yes, SAC covers it completely -- 4' x 25' -- usually completely covered by the end of June! Altho' last summer it was a bit skimpy. I'll be a bit more generous this year -- might actually fertilize the old dear this year!

Frankie is most definitely the supervisor. He does like to be "hands-on" with some plants and the juice bar scraps for the compost. And he's all about cricket control.

But beware if he catches you slacking off....

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