Two plants are making a statement in this garden. I’m afraid the Woolly Thyme is a bit louder than the Speedwell and is grabbing all the attention of the passerbys that drive by. Those walking have a bit more time and get a chance to focus on both but you and I both can guess what is catching their eye first.

Woolly Thyme – Thymus pseudolanuginosus

Planted last year in the cracks between rocks this creepy little thyme has started to cover the rock. By the end of this season it should finish the job and become the green ‘water’ falls I invisioned. That is except when in bloom, during show time I don’t care what it appears to look like. The carpet of color will make it’s own statement.

Woolly Thyme is a tiny plant and only grows about a 1/4 inch high. I love using it to cover rock in sunny dry areas where moss is out of the question. The flowers are tiny too but it’s habit of forming a carpet of blooms is one more reason that makes this a very impressive addition to the garden.

I can’t help but to get in just a bit closer for a better look. I prefer to call this plant by it’s common name. When I try to say pseudolanuginosus people think I’m swearing.

Speedwell – Veronica chamaedrys

This low growing Veronica is a pretty plant with it’s blue flowers. It’s also pretty aggressive. Give it sun and well drained soil and it will take off for parts unknown. I once had a patch that must have covered 600 square feet. No kidding, the patch had to be at least 20 x 30 without exaggeration. Do I really have to say it makes a great ground cover in sunny dry areas?

The flowers are small but numerous enough to give the area where the plants are growing a blue haze. They are all to fleeting though.

I’m very pleased with the way this garden is turning out. Planted last year it has had a chance to become established and I’m looking forward to the progression of blooms. But I’m not done yet. The poor home owner hasn’t seen me come back from the perennial nursery yet this year. I say poor because I don’t think dropping a couple hundred bucks at a time in the garden is any big deal as long as the money comes from their tree.

I just love spending their kid’s inheritance so I can play in the dirt.

My pond garden gets a spring clean up. Finally.

Note the tree stump in the upper left hand corner – The Maple tree that is no more used to provide shade for my Ligularia and Jewelweed. I think the Ligularia will handle the extra sun but the Jewelweed is going to suffer. Not that that’s a bad thing – the Jewelweed sprouts everywhere and a little help controlling it is appreciated. Yea right – I’ve planted some Yellow Jewelweed seed I collected last year.

I want to do more of this. I just love a stone wall emerging from water. The Sweet Woodruff growing out of the cracks only ads to the charm.

Stone bridge over the drainage ‘ditch’ along the driveway. All part of the plan to get the vegetable garden dry before the end of may. The crushed stone dry stream is also part of the ‘easy maintenance’ pond overflow.

There’s a dam at the end of the pond I lower to drain and flush the pond. One reason to drain the pond in the winter is to keep frogs from trying to overwinter in it. The pond is way too shallow (only a few inches deep) so before they start to think about burrowing in I drain the pond, forcing them to seek better shelter elsewhere. They don’t have far to go though, my plot is surrounded by swamp.

A look at another bridge in the ‘construction’ area. Where the hand dolly is laying was flooded not that long ago. The spring melt usually fills the area about 8 inches deep. I haven’t decided if I want to make it a permanent pond or put in a drainage pipe to carry the water away.

The wall will get done sooner or later. It’s just that I suffer from Shoemaker’s Syndrome. I probably would never have started but I came across some stone that I wasn’t going to let anybody else have.

I call this Bubble Rock. It has to be the only pieces of stone like this around. How it formed is a mystery to me but it’s mine, mine, mine. All mine. Those Jewelweed seedlings in the crack are mine too but they’ve got to go.

I guess the best way to describe it is it looks like half filled water balloons that hardened into multicolored stone. The sandstone quarry had never seen anything like it before and probably never will again. There were only a few pieces and I took them all. They just begged to be in a water feature and I couldn’t say no to them.

Well the first garden path of the year is behind me now. Sometimes I do finish what I start. I can’t take all the blame though since getting good sandstone slabs is harder than you might think. I didn’t finish this walk last year since the supply of good slabs ran out.

Availability isn’t the only problem. The supply ’store’ is not much more than a hole in the ground surrounded by piles of rock. Believe me hand picking stone can be a pain in the backside. Digging through the piles to hand pick usable stone, getting it to the truck and then loading it all takes it’s toll. Then once I get it to where it’s needed I have to unload. It is slabs like these and not the big 7 ft x 4 ft ones that are back breakers.

I try to lay the stone as it comes off the truck. Believe me you don’t want to move it any more than you have to. This is where the fun begins. Building a walk with slabs is like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. The only difference is you need to cut the pieces to fit. It really is not hard. A chisel and hammer works just fine. Now it takes some really good whacks with the hammer so you better have good eye-hand coordination. Even then, I can attest to having some fingers that don’t feel like they used to.

This is where picking the right stone makes all the difference. You want good solid stone – not flaky or loosely layered for cutting. Fresh stone (yes fresh) will cut easy, old stone that’s been exposed to the air for a long time gets hard and brittle and will shatter in directions you don’t want.

This is what I call a rough walk. The edges are not perfect and the width varies some. Since the idea is to have plants overlap the edges it doesn’t make much sense to over do the labor or to waste large slabs by cutting them up for that perfect fit. Close enough is all that’s needed here.

The boulders were placed last year.

child: – Mommy why does that guy have a big rock on his truck?
Mom:- Because he’s an idiot, sweetheart.
child: – Why is he an idiot?
mom: – Because he puts big rocks on his truck.