Jack just makes it in time this week – –

The heading translates from old Scots as ‘ Go your own way’ or even ‘do it your way’.

So a gait or gate might be an actual physical barrier but often just a path or street or alley leading somewhere. In my hometown of Dunfermline there’s a street just outside the Norman Abbey called the ‘Kirkgate’ and at the Southern entrance to the town is another one called Nethergate.

Shifting to our backyard but still with a Scottish connection – –

Many of the crofts in the highlands have two areas of ground attached to the house – the ‘in-by’ and the ‘oot-by’. In other words the nearest patch (usually for growing vegetables), and the outer patch where a cow or a pig would be raised.

Our back yard is divided into an in-by and an oot-by. We grow tomatoes in raised beds in the inner part and our chickens live in the outer part where we also grow vegetables (no cows or pigs!). So we have a fence with a gate and that wooden gate was getting pretty old and saggy.

I started by putting two 4×4 posts in and hinging the old gate to one of them, but it still sagged and twisted. So it was time for a new gate to the oot-by! We debated and searched the local hardware stores but everything was very heavy and very costly. Then Wendy suggested using lightweight PVC pipe with plastic netting stretched over.

So that’s what we did. Wendy crocheted the netting onto the pipe frame using special string and we hinged it to the post with gardening twine stapled in place. So far it isn’t sagging but we now have to think how it will be more permanently hinged and how we’ll latch it.

‘We did it our way’ or ‘gaed oor ain gait’ – – –