Puttering

Mark declared this weekend that what he'd really like from life is the opportunity to just putter. We have so many projects in mind (and are becoming more and more like true gardeners - with the next project and the next one always in the thought queue) that the necessity of working for a living is seeming more and more like an inconvenience.

(I'm counting on decent financial planning and his strong earning capacity, but he is really hoping for a lottery win. Poor man. "You could buy a ticket" he always says when I sigh over some beautiful lakeside property beyond the price range of all but the very highest income brackets.)

The little retaining wall, designed to separate the back edge of the lawn from the dark row of trees on the back of our lot - the wall that I've been dreaming about for 2 years - finally became a reality this spring. We started it at the rose garden last year, and finished it a few weeks ago, to end in a little patio area under the big trees in the corner. (I needed a place, up off the wet grass, for the Adirondack chairs - and there was an elevation difference and it seemed like a good idea to put a raised patio in - you know how these things go.) The patio got a little step and a place to put a pot, and this weekend I put in some little pavers - since you can't really walk on crushed rock in bare feet and this is a 'bare-feet and a good book' sort of place. And now it is finished.

Well, maybe not. As I sat there, today (with my bare feet and good book) I realized that it isn't done yet. There is a perfectly magical place under those big trees behind it that will make an incredible woodland garden - with my mother's favorite Lily of the Valley and with hostas and ferns and bleeding heart and maybe even some trillium, a hydrangea on the edge perhaps... I can see it in my mind already. Before the little patio went in I didn't really look at this space. We've been using it basically as a big compost pile for the autumn leaves. I didn't realize how wonderful a place it was until I was able to sit there in the afternoon sun and peer into the shade of it, through the huge trunks of the 3 big cedars that create the space.

So more puttering is afoot. More planning. More trips to the nursery. More clearing out, cleaning up, planting, fertilizing, mulching, weeding, mowing, raking. We'll need a chipper to grind up the branches that have fallen in there over the years. There are rocks to haul out - or incorporate into the garden plan. Yes, a lot of puttering. It will mostly be a project for next spring. But I have a whole year to think about it.