I need to remember that permanence is pretty relative when it comes to anything in the garden (or blog). Digging sod to make garden beds is like setting up a new wordpress theme – one can always change it back – especially if one still has the pile of sod clods resting near the compost or a few hours to waste. Laying in stone dust and placing pavers has much more of a I-only-want-to-do-this-once sort of a feel to it.
Bluestone dust is a pretty cool thing. I had no idea it was so attractive even just on its own and if I had known it was so cheap I probably would have used it to set in the busted concrete pavers in the front/sideyard garden. But those are staying put so far so, to be honest, I’m not regretting my somewhat lazier methods there. This weekend we hefted almost a yard of the dust into the backyard garden to set in slate roof tiles along the bed edges and future lawn/no lawn border. I don’t recommend using roofing slates as edgers unless, like me, you happen to have picked up a slew of them for free. None of them are perfectly flat and they are all perfectly brittle so step a little sideways and they’ll flip back onto the lawn no matter how many (15) minutes I spent setting each one in just so. But who cares. For now they’re nice to look at and when they all break into bits, they’ll be easier to tread upon. From dust to dust…
Working on this project permanentifies my master plan in a much more tangible way and of course I’m second guessing every decision. But what fun would this tiny garden be if I didn’t want to constantly tweak the permanent parts of it? Do you make impermanent master plan decisions too?
kristin green | trench manicure 
pretty cool stuff to work with! Here it would probably cost an arm and a leg! Friends have a patio of old roof slates that have been set in concrete. It does look good…. gail
Wow concrete! I’m not ready for that kind of permanence. -kris
First of all–Nice WordPress theme! 😉 Change is good, and you can always keep rearranging, as you said. Second–bluestone dust looks mighty cool, especially surrounding your thoughtfully laid out beds. I wish I’d known about it (there is a bluestone quarry 7 minutes from us), but I can’t see resetting my rock edges, even though the grass & weeds between them are starting to get out of hand, and the thyme & sedum have not yet caught up.
Hey, thanks! It looks like I even went for colors similar to yours! But you sleuthed how to tweak your title and that makes your blog theme extra cool. (and check it out – I found the reply button!) And I have a feeling that I’ll have some serious weeds coming up in the stone dust all too soon. It looks perfectly inhospitable but the weeds aren’t so picky about where they choose to camp…
I pick up free stuff all the time, get halfway through a project, and then just hope people don’t trip. Did that with pavers in two spots within the last year! Sigh. Now the plants have grown up around them so I’ll have to wait for a dry fall day for a re-do. Or never.
Hey, saw the fancy folks farfing around Blitheworld in the NY Times Society page the ohter week the other day. One lady was all spiffed out in Edwardian garb but had not been able to resist pulling out her digital cam to snap photos of the gardens. I thought, Hey, I know someone who made that irresistibly lovely photo op come to life!!! 🙂
Karen, I think we may be a lot alike… And wasn’t that NYTimes spread a total hoot?! If I had known that group would be schmancy enough for the Times, I would have stuck around that day! I did see a few of them wandering in their vintage garb talking on cell phones and taking digital pics. Too bad they weren’t more consistent with their technological accessories… A large format film camera would have been more appropriate perhaps! -kris