What the heck is a wattle?

Have you heard of them?  I am not talking about the dangling piece of flesh that hangs from a chicken's neck.  I am referring to the wattle that is fencing.  Specifically, it's a fence made from flexible pieces of wood woven through straight posts.  And we made one this weekend.

We have a row of cat mint that gets lanky and leans over the grass and the new little rose bush behind it against the picket fence.  Last fall it hung so far over the bed that the grass around the bed died, so this year we killed "two birds with one stone" so to speak.  We cut the new shoots from around our pioneer trees and recycled them into fencing. 

Now if only the grass would fill in soon.  We had a dry winter and the snowpack is melting fast.  Water will be scarce this summer and the grass will need all the help it can get.