Art work in butterfly garden.
What a lovely day.
Flower fairies garden ornaments
line my sidewalk.
I try to capture this moment
notice it is grand
put it inside my pocket
butterfly in a garden.

It is the moon that settles
brightly
bringing me my moods
just outside this window.
I think of my flower fairies
garden ornaments?
No.
Real and breathing friends to me.

The moon.
There is a part of me that fears its light
those unsettled plans
notations that I could have done better.
They keep me up at night.

Don’t say one word.
Don’t take her calls.
Whenever the crows approach
dye this fabric past mistakes
don’t block out all those stars
do not settle for sequins
sewn inside your diary.

I will not settle for less
I will no longer listen
I will not entertain those moonlit tears.
Let them settle on the ground
mud dries eventually.
Salty tears will mingle with new rain
fresh new rain.

Outspoken fantasy fairies
remind me of colors
climbing vines reach up to the trees
beautiful wisteria.
Fantasy fairies smile
giggle sometimes
remind me how easy laughter comes
once you start to smile.

I look at all my gifts
flower fairies garden ornaments
art work in butterfly garden
laughter comes in cycles.
Moon step back and see me
let me step outside the shadows
or is it let me see myself?

I cherish the lines
the curves
the starts of new adventures
lead me none the less dear moon
despite all
I still rely on all your stories.
Flower fairies garden ornaments
art work in butterfly garden.
Laughter comes in cycles
yes
as do tears
inconvenient truths
and I most humbly resign to it all.
Tiny angels, fantasy fairies
sequins pinned to the moon
blessed changes
hear me call
dear goddess in me.

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We recently added a large back yard. Toward the back of the yard is our perennial bed and gold fish pond. There’s just an empty space between the house and the garden with freshly sprouted grass.

I stood at the house and looked toward the pond and imagined the path I walk to get there. If I made that path a real path it seemed like it would add a lot to the yard. I took a rope and laid it out where I thought the path should go.

I like to work with materials I already have or with free materials. So I always question what I already have. A large pile of oak chips that came from the tree that fell on the neighbor’s house last year comes to mind. The neighbor asked if they could dump the chips over our bank in the back. The wood was in good condition when it got chopped up. So if I laid the oak chips down for a path, they would need something to contain them so they don’t end up in the grass.

Our pondless waterfall we’ve been building has had us carrying rocks back from the river so my next thought is of some small flat rocks. The next trip to the river I filled 3 five gallon buckets with small flat rocks.

First I sorted my rocks by size and started with the smallest ones at one end of the newly envisioned path. I made two rows with the rocks about 40″ apart and put the wood chips in between the rows of rocks. Later that afternoon I had a beautiful looking path and what a change it made to the yard.

You could also consider using short fencing, bricks, pavers, small tree trunks, crushed stones, or bark chips for materials. Use your imagination to come up with materials for your path.

Last week a visitor mentioned how beautiful the yard looked and how great the path was. He said to his wife “Look at what her husband did. (why do the men always get the credit?) He built that path for free. We just spent $6000 for pavers to do the same thing!”

We had a large newly created yard and I have a love of flowers so I naturally desired a flower garden. The problem was that the fill that was trucked in to create this yard was all chunks of blacktop and concrete with a light sprinkling of top soil to cover the chunks. There was no digging into the dirt without hitting something solid. We couldn’t even drive in a tent stake.

The town workers were scraping the sides of the roads after a long winter of sanding icy and snowy roads. They had two loads of roadside dirt they wanted to dump that looked like pretty good dirt so I let them dump it in a pile in the back of the yard.

After staring at the pile for some time, I began to see a fish pond and perennial garden in the dirt. My husband and I started working moving the dirt around to form a bowl in the center and grading the dirt away where the flowers would be planted. A flower bed would be wonderful, but with a pond in the center it will be even better.

Because we didn’t know what we were doing, we used a grey plastic tarp for a liner. It worked well for two years. The spring of the third year we replaced it with rubber pond liner which will last many years. We purchased a pump and a filter so we could keep fish.

We had a fairly large pile of limestone rocks left over from an old rock wall. These rocks became the border for our perennial garden. My sister has horses and a nice pile of old horse manure. She graciously brought me a pickup truck load of manure which we mixed in the dirt. There is a recycling plant nearby that makes compost so we got a load of it to help improve the soil.

Another sister was cleaning out her perennial beds in the fall and throwing out a lot of overgrown plants which made great starter plants for me. I filled the back of my truck and brought them home to their new bed. I placed the plants in the ground for the winter. In the spring I divided the plants up and spread them out and had a great start on my flower bed.

Each year since then I add a few plants purchased at flower shows, the grocery store, and nurseries. I’ve also traded many plants with others happy to get different plants than they have. Now, seven years later, I am enjoying seven flower beds created basically the same way with beautiful flowers blooming from April through October.

Copyright 2006 Alice Scott