After looking at the rock border for a few days, I wasn’t loving the look, it just seemed too symmetrical and plain.  Hmmm, what about bamboo? YES!  So, the rocks were carried back to their original place by the kids (who looked at me as if I was crazy) as I tried to figure out the best way to make a bamboo border.

Dara and I looked all around the local market but only could find small (in diameter) bamboo, not the large ones I had in my mind.  Driving towards the city, we found a shop that had the right thickness that I was looking for and after securing it to the truck, we headed to the plant shop and I just started pointing to this and that (much to the enjoyment of the shop keeper) and soon had a sufficient amount of plants.

Once home, we unloaded everything and the plants were arranged and rearranged all along the wall. (Ben is such a poser.)

After buying a couple of hand saws, the real work began!  EVERYONE wanted to use the saws, and most tried it out, but only a handful had the stamina to keep going.  The best temporary carpenters hands down were Rortana and Phearon who together cut more than half of the pieces themselves.  After those two, I would say Tola probably cut his weight in bamboo. Believe it or not, there were only 2 casualties, both from Yudun, who cut his pants and received a minuscule scrape on his knuckle.

As the pieces started adding up, I still hadn’t figured out a way to set them in place.  At one time we had a drill press, (used for making bamboo bracelets many years ago) but we constantly change rooms and things got moved around, so I hadn’t seen it in years.  I had time to ponder it though since the cutting took a few days.

Dara ended up finding the drill press (YEA!) and I got to work drilling hundreds of little holes.  My trusty workers, Chanrai and Tola started stringing them together with wire cable.  We started out in the laundry room, but quickly ran out of room, so it was moved outside and Sophal took over the stringing.

The bamboo path became a play place of sorts and kept the small ones busy…which was fine since digging the border in the rock hard earth (with our only shovel) was a one-person job.

Chay and Seng Hak helped me move/drag the bamboo border to its new home, pound it into place and fill in the gaps with soil.

We were only about 10 pieces shy of completion when we ran out of wire cable.  A quick trip to the craft room for some thick copper wire and we were back in business as Hong and Da helped me string and hammer the final poles in place.

Part 5 and final post coming soon!