An artist’s greatest fear is to see his work offered at a yard sale for three dollars and nobody seems remotely interested except an other artist who buys it strictly for the material to make canvas stretchers. The sentient hockey stick’s greatest fear is to become a tomato stake — the bottom rung of busted-hockey-stick transformation. I beg you not to subject a retired and disfigured staff to such humiliation. Make a trellis. Transform those pieces of wood into a classic garden embellishment. In one afternoon of sawing, measuring, cussing, measuring again, sawing some more, hammering, cussing, and digging, you can have this attractive trellis finished and your wife pleading, “Please put it somewhere else.” Take no notice, craftsmen of the world. You are an artist and deserve your entrance to the salon. Are you a mere refusé? Stand tall and put that trellis where the world can see it! Those subtle accents and finely trimmed angles speak of Old World traditions (possibly the ones that put your ancestors on a boat, exiled for sloppy workmanship.) Should you care to paint over old logos on the sticks for the sake of harmony of hue, the world will take even more notice. Imagine a British racing green grid, entwined with climbing roses and splashed with red and white blooms. You get the picture. As for the harmony of hue, well, I’ve never heard hue sing.
As anyone in the snow belt knows, a frost heave is not what happens when you eat your Freezie too quickly. Nope, it’s that unpredictable ground shifting in the spring that sets foundations, patios, and yes, trellises askew. I have been told that a footing of 36” below ground level is necessary. That’s some long hockey sticks you’ll be needing!