Woodland paths

The path to our front door is finally taking on the feel of a woodland path, happily.  In the second year after planting, the Christmas ferns, bloodroot, wild gingers, crested iris, and other (tough) woodland wildflowers are looking good.

The rhododendrons are in flower now, so it feels a bit like being in the mountains.

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A new flagstone pathway

An unusually balmy fall day (it hit 75° F in mid-afternoon) was great for gardening. The low humidity made for a deep blue sky, not the usual sort in the Southeastern U.S.

My gardening companion (aka my husband) suddenly thought that we needed to place the stones 'left-over' from our front pathway project (uh, a couple of years ago) in the mulch beyond the backyard gate. He spread the gravel (the pile next to the garage has been there awhile, too), spread the stones, and said it was ready for the expert stone-placer (that's me). The front pathway has been a pleasing addition, but it WAS a huge effort, although quite rewarding.

It was a bit challenging (these were the leftovers, after all). And, a couple of months of relative inactivity has left me in need of more strengthening work, and I'm certain to be sore tomorrow! But it was a good start to the path and patio that we've got planned, after a new delivery of stone.

The gravel and stone are quite bright-looking, so I haven't taken a photo yet. But soon, rain, leaves, and bits of organic matter will soften the overall effect.

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A perfect spring evening

April has been perfect so far. No late freezes. No unpleasant hot spells. It's been rainy (hooray!) Today's weather was exceptional (and 'normal') - a high of about 70° F with a morning low in the upper 40's. The same is expected tomorrow.

Coming home, the light was lovely, although still bright enough to fool the camera.

I took another picture of our front path; it's really worked out well.

And then I admired these lovely Tennis Ball lettuces. A butterhead variety grown by Thomas Jefferson, they're so pretty, they're hard to thin, much less harvest.

A nice salad was part of my dinner out on the porch (my gardening companion is off taking photos of spring wildflowers in the Smokies).

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Laying a flagstone path update

A recent comment on a couple of old posts about laying a flagstone path reminded me of how well our path has held up.

My most recent picture was in January (the one here), but I had just been thinking last week about how pleasant it is to have a nice stone path compared to its previous scruffy state.

I haven't done any more stone work since then (aside from a small retaining wall next to the shed), and tidying up the wall bordering the main vegetable garden.

Last summer's extreme drought made the short path and patio below the porch totally unappealing as a project.

Maybe this summer!

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Less grass, more interest

It's really time to get rid of more grass. The drought is an incentive, not that we ever water our drought-tolerant Zoysia.

But the frequently-trampled patches that used to be full of honeybee-friendly clover have become hard-packed clay punctuated by unattractive tufts of something unrecognizable. And as we're walking more around the house (post-garden shed) and taking Mocha (the pampered Golden retriever) out the kitchen door more (the main vegetable garden side), we're wearing down a path more than ever.

I've been planning a flagstone patio on the porch side for awhile, mirroring the front walkway that I put in last fall, but I'm thinking I'll extend it around the house in an informal path, replacing the scruffy grass between the house and main vegetable garden with some sort of mulch or gravel/mulch mix beyond that. Flagstone there would be too much, competing with the house and the main vegetable garden's stacked stone edge.

And the slope below the house that's drying up after two summers of extreme drought --why not convert it to a drought-tolerant 'gravel garden' like Beth Chatto's in Essex, with mixed herbs and flowers? I could create a retaining wall of stone on the slope with defined paths.

I'm ready to get rid of the riding lawn mower that we had to buy when we first moved in, faced with almost two acres of grass. We're now down to maybe 1/4 to 1/3 an acre of grass, well within range of a newfangled reel mower!

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Laying a flagstone path (2)

I needed a third pallet of flagstone to finish the front path, and it was delivered late Saturday morning. In the meantime, my gardening companion dug up the rest of the base, taking a break from his regular mulch moving so I was ready (notice the HUGE piles dropped off 'free' by the powerline tree trimming contractors).

There were a number of roots to work around and the path goes downhill slightly towards the drive, so it was a bit more challenging to do the final segment.

But, I finished laying all the stone this afternoon, and cleaned up the area, although I still need to put in the rest of the granite paver base around the stone and make sure each stone is firmly set.

It looks good, and Mocha was enjoying the view late this afternoon. It took roughly 2 1/2 pallets of flagstone and a couple of 'scoops' of paver base to do the pathway. My labor was about 2 days, spread out over 3 weekends. I worked in 2-3 hours stints, at most half a day, with plenty of 'lighter' activities in between.

For the first part of the story, see Putting in a flagstone path (1).

The complete photo sequence of creating this path is posted in a Picasa Web gallery. Just click through whatever ads pop up to get to the gallery!

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Laying a flagstone path (1)

We've been wanting a decent path to the front door for a long time. We bought our house from the second owner; he seemed to use the side door into the master bedroom primarily. Odd, but effective. The path to the front door was grass, with a few half-buried concrete stepping stones evident, and the whole surface quite uneven because of roots and chipmunk tunnels. After we finally had lights installed in the garage, and the front porch lights repaired, it seemed like a good idea to finally put in a front path.

It's been on my project list for awhile, along with a small wildlife pond. Last summer, with a bit more free time, I'd had a couple of landscapers come over to give me estimates. The first, working with a very reputable company, took a long time to provide an estimate, one that had my helpful gardening assistant (not Mocha, our Golden Retriever) gasping, and saying that he could easily dig the path base for me. The second estimate was a bald dollars per square foot estimate, and could he use his Bobcat to scrap down the area (no, because of the roots of the big water oak and pine).

I asked a younger colleague to give me an estimate as well. This was in the hottest part of August when the soil was incredibly hard. He and a couple of friends do work on the weekends, but clearly they weren't enthusiastic about excavating our hard Piedmont clay in the summer by hand.

So, after things had cooled down in the fall, and we'd had a bit of rain, at least enough to moisten the top inch of soil, I said that I'd get a couple of pallets of stone that Saturday morning. My gardening companion, more focused on the home game that he was heading off to, said 'great' and went off to work on writing his book and then on to the game.

I went and selected a couple of pallets of stone, taken aback a bit at the size of the flagstones. The pallets I'd got in the past were nice small stones, which I was quite proud of myself for stacking up in attractive low walls. But I was heartened by the fellows at the stone shop -- they didn't laugh at me about how I couldn't move these stones, but said that I wouldn't need to go to the gym to lift weights after moving the stones (they're between 15 and 45 lbs.

My gardening companion, returning home after the game, took a look at me ineffectually trying to dig up the turf, and grumped about how he was planning to move mulch that afternoon, but then went to work. He's much more able than me (I didn't get the hefty shoulder and arm genes) to scrap up the turf and get it ready for the paver base, made up of the granite dust that packs so nicely.


Now, I'm figuring that our clayey soils don't need the recommended 6" of paver base (hello, what about the roots of our trees?) and these stones don't look like they're going anywhere, so I'm trying to settle them in as best I can, in an attractive pattern, and sift the granite dust around them.

After last weekend, I felt like I'd been beaten with sticks, but had recovered enough by this weekend to lay another good bit of stone, after my gardening companion dug out the base.

So, if I can do this, with decent fitness, and weight-training with wimpy weights twice a week, I figure that it's certainly within reach of fit gardeners, especially if they are stronger than I am.

For the rest of the path story, see Laying a flagstone path (2).

There's lots of help online - just google creating a stone path, or building a stone path, but my favorite reference is a book by Barbara Pleasant, Garden Stone.

The complete photo sequence of creating this path is posted in a Picasa Web gallery.

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