How do you love My Personal Stonehenge on the front lawn?
When we moved here almost four years ago, the lawn was in terrible shape. For the most part, it remains in that state, but at last we are moving in the right direction — I think.
We share this tiny space with a neighbour and, being the newcomers, didn't want to step on toes at first although the situation desperately required intervention, but since said former neighbor seemed to want to try to try his own rather ungreen hand at improving the situation — a task which resulted in an F grading — we kept our own council for the first two seasons. Last year, however, we became a little more assertive — gently so — and put the former and pathetic tree out of its misery, replacing it with the twig that you see in the photo down below. A least it's a healthy twig which, hopefully, has a promising future. We also elicited our former neighbour's permission to begin sowing white clover since normal grass doesn't seem to destined to flourish in this yard.
The former tree, a Mountain Ash, is perhaps worthy of a digression. We are told that the previous occupant of our house thought its roots were too close to the surface, so he decided to hack them out, clever fellow that he was. Apparently, the tree was never the same after that although, for the life of me, I can't begin to fathom why.
Fast forward to this year: the clover is coming along, and the new tree seems to be taking hold. However, the new lilac tree was no longer in the original flower bed, and I thought the two should be brought into one as a flower bed circle in front of the tree seemed rather odd. So, one day early last week, Cuppa and I were out measuring an outline for a larger flower bed in order to know how many bordering stones to purchase for the newly envisioned bed when one of our new neighbours offered his two cents: our new neighbours being a group of young men — nice but young — an important caveat, I'm afraid.
One of these stalwart fellows works for a paving company that apparently does some landscaping. He offered to bring home field rocks that they use. And so he did bring five here and dumped them on the lawn. But that was Wednesday, and by Sunday no further rocks had appeared. Young males, you see, would not necessarily see the importance of getting the job done rather than leaving gargantuan boulders strewn about willy nilly for half the summer.
So, old AC and his decrepit spine, went foraging. Fortunately, as I have previously posted, rock is abundant here. Just find a construction site, and you'll find rocks aplenty, and since there's much construction going on locally these days, rocks are plentiful. Unfortunately, they're only available on a carry-out basis, so back and forth we went on Sunday, what passes for my back and me, trying to choose rocks that would fit together in some sort of semi sensible fashion. And this is the result.
The next step will be to lay old newspapers down as a weed barrier before filling with garden soil and putting in some plants. I had a respectable perennial garden back in Sarnia a few years ago but was glad to take a hiatus from tending plants for these past several years, which partly explains why I distanced myself from proper grounds keeping. However, I am beginning to itch again — for more modest acreage this time, however. I suppose that annual bedding plants will take centre stage this year, but I hope to have a bit of perennial garden again in the near future.
And that's the account of the little Stonhenge that lies upon my tiny front lawn ... where hopefully only young virgin mosquitoes will be sacrificed.
