Rock Gardens

If you were very observant you would have noticed in the last blog post that three big boulders have appeared in our side yard that faces College Avenue.  We are quite smitten by them.

We are in the land of rocks.  Almost every house has at least one or more big boulders nestled somewhere in the garden.  Rock gardens abound in these parts and I love them.  

Our yard has many smaller rocks, but no big ones.  As we walked around the neighborhood and looked at everyone's rock gardens we had big rock envy.  We thought about buying some and putting them in the front yard but having big boulders delivered to your home is an expensive proposition.

Then one day we were out walking and stopped to chat with James, a neighbor around the corner who moved in about the same time we did.  We had met him and his wife, Harriot, at their garage sale and subsequently had dinner and so we stopped to chat.  James was ripping up his yard, killing the grass so he could xeriscape (drought-proof) his yard and putting in a new sidewalk so Harriot's musician friends could safely carry their big cellos and other instruments up to the house for rehearsals during the winter.  James told us he needed to get rid of three big boulders in his front yard and we said "We'll take them!'  

I emailed an acquaintance who is a local landscaper to ask who could move boulders, and she put me on to Macario, who appeared last week with a big front loader carrying the first of the three boulders from James' yard.      

Macario not only transported the three boulders from James' house to ours, he artistically placed them in under our big picture window on College Avenue. 

The plan is to make a nice curved line marking the change from grass to mulch/rock garden, and then plant sun-loving rock garden plants around the boulders.  Iris, Jacob's Ladder, Poppies -- it should be very colorful and pretty--with a big smoke bush to hide the electric meter.   Check back in five years; it should look great.

In other parts of the yard we have been gardening like crazy, ripping out tons of overgrown perennials so we can plant some orderly gardens.   Here's  the newly planted little rock garden at the end of the patio, after we pulled out almost all the Forget-Me-Nots which had taken over and uncovering several beautiful medium sized river rocks.    

Paul helped me with that particular garden project, digging up Forget-Me-Nots, levering up the river rocks and moving them to new spots.   Thanks, Paul!  And, of course, Ben helps not only by digging but by bringing home bags of mulch and dirt which are so useful to have around when you're creating new beds or improving old ones.

Little by little we are tidying things up in the garden.  It feels good to be in control of something, at least for a short amount of time.  And it's so nice to sit in an orderly garden and enjoy the peace it offers.

But we need more rocks!  Small ones to line the garden beds, like you see in the above photo.  This type you can just load up in your car and I think tomorrow we might drive to a local stone yard and do that very thing.   Out here you can never have too many rocks!