Planting Rocks!

As I have decided the center area around Grendel was going to be more or less plantless I decided I needed some stepping stones. Freecycle came through on that account, and handily enough from a neighbor right around the corner from me. I did need to go dig twelve large, poured concrete stone fascimiles out of their back yard (those suckers were heavy!) but I also got 6 round pavers thrown into the bargain. No idea what I was going to do with them, but I lugged those suckers home too, figuring some use would occur to me, or that I could always freecycle them again. So Grendel has a cute little path circling her now. They were just sitting in the dirt though, which wasn't going to work in the long run; my yard tends to turn into a miniature pond when it rains hard.

Not wanting to deal with upkeep on a teeny tiny grass lawn we opted for moss. I had asked Little Turtle if she'd seen any moss in her ramblings about the woods that surround our townhouses & she promptly set off with a little bucket/watering pitcher & a trowel and brought it back, full of moss. Oooh, moss! She said there was more, so we set out together to bring it back to carpet around the stone path. Turns out it was not technically in the woods; it was in the side yard of the end townhouse. Err, oops. The debris & detritus in that area led me to believe that they never went around the side of their house anyway, plus moss grows right? So, we made several trips and brought all we could find there back. We will need to take a walk in the actual woods (bike paths here rock, should make for easy access to mossy goodness) to find some more to finish up, but I was impressed by how much the first haul supplied to our moss-lawn.

Up by my house I have planters and other pots along with a little tree shaped table & 2 chairs, hereby allowing a nice, relaxing spot from which to watch the garden grow, drink morning coffee, an evening glass of wine and so forth. The problem is, it's dirt and my spigot/hose drip into the dirt and create mud. My table and chairs were slowly settling into the mud making this a not so nice, relaxing place, but rather a place to perch precariously, hoping to avoid too much more sinkage. So I've been thinking for the week following what to do about this. Options that I came up with were to pour cement there, making it a little patio (which I don't even begin to pretend to know how to do), get some paving slabs at Homey D's (looked, didn't really like the options in my price range), gravelly rocks (eh, not very exciting) or fashioning something of my own design. Being the crafty person that I am, which do you think ended up coming to pass? Yep, I had a New Project. Woot.

I spent some time poking around on Craftster's Gardeny Forums for ideas for my future patio. The cooliest cool idea I read involved making stepping stones with lucite, hot pink (ooooh, flamingoey!) aquarium gravel and a springform pan. I do own a springform pan, but I tend to think that making paving stones with it will render it unfit for kitchen use. Plus, I'm not sure I can easily get my hands on lucite, as cool as that sounds to me. I opted to go beg a dozen pizza boxes from of Papa John's to use as my molds, use cement in place of lucite and purchased vastly too many bags of lovely aquarium gravel (which are sliding around in my trunk now, waiting for me to return them to the pet store). In trying to calculate the number of pizza boxes based on my patio dimensions, Little Turtle proved to be far more observant than I; as I was measuring the boxes with my tape measure & scribbling calculations, she sagely pointed out, "Big Turtle, the size of the box is written on the side, you know." Smarty pants.

When you are mixing cement in a utility bucket, you get approximately enough mixed cement for one stone. I ended up only needing to make 10 paving stones, but of course assumed that they would take no time at all to make. Well, no. I ended up playing hookie from work on monday to finish this little endeavor, because there was no damn way I was going to be patient enough to wait until the following weekend to sit on the patio currently residing in my imagination. Don't worry, I have oodles of vacation time that has sat unused, patiently waiting for me to squander them, plus I didn't have anything pressing at work that day, and I deserve a "me day" every once in a while. So, yeah.

I definitely worked up a system with making these stones and was far more efficient at getting the cement the perfect consistency by stone number 7 or so. I also got to the point where I could eyeball exactly the right amount of cement for one stone, not to little, not too much. I have some serious paving stone making skillz now, nearly rivaling my google-fu skillz. I waited patiently for the cement to cure until Tuesday night to put my stones in, wouldn't want to sit down and crack a stone & end up sitting in the mud, now would we? Patience paid off, as I have not yet had any mud related issues on my patio.

Those flamingo plates (turquoise background, which inspired the selection of the particular aquarium rock colors I used) were a stroke of genius I believe. I already have plans for continuing the theme this weekend. Stay tuned, dear readers.