Moss and Brick

Time for a little bragging on my partner. A has been working with me on a strange little vision I had for a particular corner of our yard.We have this nook against the back of the house where the stone foundation creates two walls around a sheltered little garden spot. When we bought the house it was already a special feeling place.

One day while digging there, my spade hit a little china statue of St. Francis, resting in the black dirt and now he sits in the top of my china cabinet (probably some Catholic sacrilege to dig him out from under the roses and bring him in but I am none the wiser for having done it). The moss grows green and moist here and there were ferns of several varieties that didn't live anywhere else on the property. It was green and lush and the grass was even usually happy. I decided it needed to be a slightly enclosed, circular kind of contemplation garden. The kind of place where you could bring a good book and have a good cry, or a little boy could be alone with his favorite Matchbox cars which all have secret names. Eventually I want to enclose it quite a bit and have the flowers and things inside it be special lush haven. Someday there's going to be a little burbling fountain and a bench or chair for resting but for now...there's the first amazing, real piece.

Wall in progress, still a little sod on the right to be lifted and filled under.

Some of the old bricks we found on our property that got worked into the sides.

A built me a brick retaining wall, making the lawn a perfect little circle. The bricks will age and the moss will move in and sometime very soon I'll lay a set of steps. I'm rather in love with the effect. A was very energetic about the project, peeling back the sod and shoveling good topsoil underneath to raise it all the a level plain, morning after early morning before work. I am very impressed. Not bad for a guy with no masonry experience, eh? I think its all pretty magical.

Tah Dah!!!!! The finished beauty...minus steps.

Garden Excavation

Tomorrow morning A will roust us all out of bed early and we'll head down to our local U-Haul pick up station and collect our cargo van. Then we're off to the old apartment to spend the day digging plants, bundling them into um....plastic grocery sacks? (I haven't any better ideas) and then hauling them in variously layered loads back to our new house.

I was really supposed to carve a "holding bed" for them out of the lawn but instead I'm going to hack it out in two minutes and pretend that was the plan while A stands there looking dubious and our children roll in the freely sprinkling topsoil. I expect to be one big filthy family from top to toe by tomorrow bedtime. Good thing I bought a fingernail brush earlier this week, eh?

I have made a list of all the plants I want to dig and even though its a list of (lemme check)......a list of 30 plants, but truly, that's not terribly daunting, is it? [*note: if you disagree this is the spot in the dialogue where you lie] A is planning to spend the entire day digging plants and hauling and hauling and hauling.

I on the other hand am glibly planning to dig them all in the morning, have a jolly lunch together and then go and do something clever and fun that we haven't though of yet! I like optimism.

One last fond goodbye to the old garden of yore.....

And P.S.

While we're on the subject of gardens and home decorating...we were perpetually thinking about home decorating, right? Right. Anywho. I am in mad, mad love with this very expensive rug. Blast you Anthro.