Stones are quiet. I love stones, an affection I have always linked to the contented hours I spent as a girl sitting atop an old stone wall in Vermont. There is safety in stones. I trust stones.
Almost fifteen years ago, as I turned fifty, I decided that I wanted to put a small Zen garden in the back corner of our yard, behind my vegetable patch. The unmistakable irony is that
the commuter rail trains pass by about twenty feet away. Nonetheless, that was my plan, but the dream remained a dream. Until this week, when the stones arrived and the work began…
The path starts at the entrance to my redesigned vegetable garden. (Elevated beds have made gardening a joy once again.) The path will continue up into the corner, leading eventually to a small stone bench beside the little weeping cherry tree, planted about ten years ago. There will be three standing stones, bamboo (in above ground boxes, I’ve heard the cautions about bamboo spread), other plantings and eventually a small statue.
The dream lives on and dreams take time to manifest. So, something good did happen this week. Here are a couple photos taken by my darling daughter (whose talented arborist boyfriend is installing the stones…)
Meditation garden plans look wonderful. You know, if you buy ‘clumping’ bamboo, rather than ‘running’ bamboo, it will stay in one place indefinitely, with the size of the plant enlarging from the original up to 2 or 3 feet circumference perhaps. I have a clump of large diameter (1″-2″) bamboo which are probably twenty years old. but it has only grown to 3-4 feet across and don’t seem to be going much farther. Here’s a website with some interesting varieties: http://www.bamboogarden.com/Hardy%20clumping.htm#clumping overview