The Mystery Walkway

I had a nice little stepping stone walk. With a nice little woodland bed behind it. And other than the occasional accident it was perfectly functional.

The woodland bed had Azaleas, Ferns, Jack in the Pulpit, Dutchman’s Breaches, Columbine, Crocus, Violets both purple and white and the Yellow Dogtooth. It was one of my first beds and many of the plants had been gathered from the woodland behind our house.

Then last summer extra stepping stones started to appear. First there were just a few extras between the original stones. Just laying there on the surface.

Then this spring they really started to multiply and along with more stepping stones there appeared more plants. These plants came in little pots or mysterious boxes came in the mail with DG Co-op written on them. They had names like Arum, Tiarella, Hellebores, Heuchera and Sweet Woodruff just to mention a few.

Then Ric started disappearing and when he came back he was filthy.

Oh My, What could he be doing?

Well, the walkway is done and Ric did a wonderful job.

Since the bed has been expanded I will be digging in some good compost and putting in a few new plants. Some of them have already gone in around the back corner and a few bits of Irish Moss in the cracks in the walkway.

Almost time to move on to the next project The Mysterious Stone Wall. Where did those rocks come from and "who" put them here and "who" gets to build the wall. Giggle, Giggle, Giggle.....
Ric just can’t wait to get started on that. LOL

You just have to tease me with those beautiful rocks again! Wonderful end result and I especially like the little tufts of green toward the end of the path - moss? Can't wait to see the stone wall when it's completed - where does Ric get all his energy? Seems these days the only work I'm doing in the gardens is watering :( But on the positive side, it gives me plenty of time to think about what plants need to be moved, yanked or replaced!

Thanks Debbie, The little green tuffs are "Irish Moss" Sagina Subulata and there is also "Platt's Black" Leptinella planted in the cracks around the corner. I have to practically tie him down and sit on him to get him to stop. I learned years ago not to try and keep up with him. The day he finished the walkway I had been outside doing some down and dirty work all day long. About 4:30 Ric ran out of sand and I suggested he quit for the day and finish up the next morning. No he headed down to a local contractor to pick up more sand. When he came back I had showered and cleaned up, I was done for the day. He on the other hand wanted to finish up the walk. He worked till about 9:00PM finishing up while I sat in an Adirondack Chair reading the newspaper and drinking a glass of wine watching him work.

Holly, Ric did a great job on that walkway. Looks like the plant fairy who sent those mysterious boxes did a great job too. LOL

Thanks Hart, I was just out picking up some Ornamental Hose Guards to put on the inside curve of the walk to help protect the plants when I get them all in. I'm having some Sun - Shade issues trying to decide which plants can go where. As you can see in some of the pictures I have extended the bed beyond the permanent shade line. The curve gets some full sun during different times of the day and that changes during different times of the year. I might be "forced" to pick up a few more appropriate plants LOL
BTW how's your pond looking, any chance you could post a few pics over on the Mid-Atlantic Pond thread?
Here's the around the curve area right between the house and potting shed. I tucked in some Sweet Woodruff and Heuchera "Tapestry" under the edge of the Azalea. There's one of the Irish Moss plugs I put in the walkway and the 4 dark green spots behind Bubbles are the Leptinella.

Here is the other side of the same area against the potting shed. I've got a couple of Morning Glories growing on a trellis up the side of the potting shed and a couple of dusty miller I stuck in there plus I added 2 of these Heuchera "Midnight Rose" they will take a little more sun than some of the others. I'll have to look around for something else to put in there that will take a little more sun and not get too big.

Just the opposite here - Ric sounds like me! You never could get me inside until dark - Rick would be the one on the deck hollering down to me asking when dinner was going to be ready! LOL

Everything looks lovely :) The Sweet Woodruff should fill in quickly! Envious of your 'Midnight Rose', I've read all the hype about this one and when I saw it this spring at one of the sales - I held off a day and when I went back they were all gone :( Somewhere, maybe the Heuchera forum, someone said they had seen it at Lowes - I keep checking!

Absolutely gorgeous!!! I'll show you mine later...tee, hee....kinda like the David and Goliath of walk ways....except my "David" has no sling nor rocks....LOL

I love the walkway. What a great job.

Really nice walkway!

Very pretty!

Laura

Debbie, Yep you are right, Role reversal since Ric does most of the cooking now that would be me on the deck crying "Feed me". LOL
Chantell, I'll be looking forward to seeing your walkway bet it will be very nice even without rocks. LOL
Thanks everyone for all the nice comments, I've passed them all along to Ric.

I was just teasin'...it has rocks...kinda like a "Mini-me" rendition of yours...LOL

Oh, That is so pretty, just a little garden path. Bet that path just smells wonderful when you walk down it.

Hollyann, It looks really great. I also really like the lion and the blue "Egg"!

Thank you Stormyla, I made the lions for Ric. They are ceramic and painted with a stone glaze. There is one on each side of my front walk near the porch. The Blue Egg is a water feature it's a bubbler and if you follow this link it will tell you all about it.



http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/831255/

Holly, if your rocker ever comes up missing just follow the drool to my house. Nothing like a comfy rocker on the front porch to rock away the hours.

Wow, Hollyann, that's one talented family! Good for you! Thanks for sharing. You could have another carreer making instructional videos.........in you spare time!

Tanks Stormyla, We all dabble in a lot of different things. The guys are all pretty handy and as a group we are all pretty crafty too.

Lady LOL on that Rocker, Ric picked it up from along side the road, someone had set it out for trash pick up. He's always dragging some kind of interesting trash home. All it needed was the seat fixed took him about 5 minutes. It's a nice small rocker with a padded tapestry cover back and seat. In the early morning you can watch the sun rise, the Hummers are always flitting around the Trumpet vine arbor and Fuschia basket. There's a Cat Bird with a nest in a nearby bush and she is always out front and you can hear the soft dripping sounds from the blue egg water feature. It's very pleasant.

What a find, look out! Not only do I have an eye on that rocker but the man who found and repaired it. LOL
The rocker is a beauty. I had an old wicker on the porch a long time ago, someone stopped and asked if I wanted to sell it, I told them no, as I liked sitting there and rocking watching the world go by, a few months after that it came up missing. : (

Lady, So sorry to hear about your lost rocker. I wander sometimes about people who think their wants are so much more important than anyone else. That " I want it so I will take it attitude" carries over in to so many different areas of their life. Hopefully it brought them no joy.

Oh, the rocker. I sure hope they look at it for years and feel horribly guilty.

My DH just presented me with a mystery repaired garden hose. Not quite a walkway....LOL

Sally LOL, I'd love a mystery garden hose repair, mine drips cold water on me every time I water. LOL
Ric drug home some more trash the other night. No holes, stains or funny odors. Looks nice with the rocker and Bubbles thinks it's pretty comfortable.

Ric was out digging last night till God knows when. He took out several wheelbarrow loads of that beautiful red clay we have and replaced it with some nasty old horse manure. LOL
It needs to be worked some more but you can really tell how much more garden space I will have with the new walkway. You can see the old garden line and the new area. It's approx 2 ft wider closer to 3ft in the middle. I'm not feeling very well today so I didn't go out and play in the dirt but I was sitting out on the steps looking at it for quite awhile. Nobody but a Gardner would understand it if I told them that I spent half my day looking at fresh turned dirt.

I have had a few things taken from my yard, that what happens when you live so close to the street and on a corner lot. We have an area fair in the fall and we are within walking distance of it, I have learned over the years to start putting things away that may be a temptation for people to take that park their cars close to the house. As I have gotten older I don't spend a lot of time at the Fair so I'm home most of the time guarding the property.

Holly I just love the way you are decorating the outside of your home. That rug is a good find! And so nice you could sit back and take some time to smell the roses or I should say smell the horse manure/ or newly turned dirt,lol. Hope you are felling better.

Holly, looks wonderful and so many possibilities!!! I'm another one who "stares" at the dirt. My only problem is I come up with all these great ideas and then I forget what they are! LOL That's why I've resorted to the camera - I take pictures of different areas so I can "study" them and write my ideas down on paper - good news is...I have "before" pictures, bad news...sometimes I lose the paper with all my ideas :( Love the "trash" - Rick does the same thing, although his "saves" aren't as nice as yours :) Although about four years ago he did find a bunch of Lily of the Valley that someone had left beside the dumpsters and it's spread nicely in one area of the gardens :)

Holly are the walkway stones set in a sand bed? That wouldn't be ""SO'' hard to do but I would have to be incredibly vigilant against our wire grass/Bermuda or whatever it is that forms a continuous network thru my whole neighborhood.

It is really nice looking- I would stare too.

Sally, I don't think quite a sand bed where you dig up an area and lay down a whole level of sand and then place the stones on top of that. Because we gathered our stones instead of buying them there is a big difference in the thickness of them, some only and inch or so and one of them is a good 6 inches thick on the one edge. It's more like we dug out a small area as big as a couple of stones sprinkled some sand to level each stone and then poured the sand between the stones to fill in. I was thinking about putting potting soil in the cracks for the plants I want to stick in but opted to just fill in with the sand since I only put a few plants in the cracks right now. Ric did pretty much all the work but I laid out the pattern on top. Which means that I moved all those rocks around and placed a few of the first stones in the ground myself last summer. As we gathered up the stones over the last couple of years I've been moving them around to see how they would fit together. Some of those stones were pretty thick and heavy but I could move all of them, not necessary lift them but move them. It really is the kind of job that I could have done myself and probably would have done it last summer while Ric was still working if I hadn’t had that shoulder surgery. Of course it would have been a couple of rocks at a time I would never have been able to do it in the time Ric did. We may have some grass issues, too. We have some growing thru the brick walkway that we have to keep in check.

Thanks.
In case you have any propblem with the sand washing out, I have read there is a product that sticks it together, or you can buy sand that sets. I meant to tell my sister. She did a small stone patio all herself, just a bit from me at the end, bit mentioned the sand was leaking out in places.

I planted the extended bed this morning and added the decorative hose guards to the edge there are 6 guards 2 each of 3 different styles. Also placed a few small stepping stones in the bed so I have a place to step in or lean on while working in the wider bed. I’ll probably add a few more of those as I work around in the bed and decide where I need them. I’ll add a thin layer of mulch later just a thin top dressing till it fills in more. I have almost half a flat of impatiens that I will add but they got so leggy while waiting to get planted that I had to cut them back so I don’t really know how well they will fill in or if they will bloom again.

So now the athe walkway tour is done I'll do the garden tour.
I planted 4 of these Cyclamen “Something Magic”

Here is the Lamium “Beacon Silver”, Dwarf Astilbe (unnamed) and there are 7 mixed Hellebores plants. Also another Lamium “Anne Greenaway” (not shown)

This message was edited Jul 5, 2008 1:49 PM