My apologies to Kevin Costner (and the real-life inspiration for A Field of Dreams) but I’ve learned my own lesson: If you fill it with water, they will come.
One morning, it was a dragonfly who skimmed by the bird bath at least a dozen times. He hasn’t landed…yet…that I know of.
A “ding,” and a message on my phone. A clip from Classic Peanuts. Snoopy, decked out in swim trunks, runs across the yard, does a flip, and ends up in the bird bath. As his head pops out of the water, it is covered with tiny yellow birds.
“How was I to know Woodstock was having a swim party?” the cartoon reads.
My brother-in-law, Tim-the-poet, is CEO of my blog fan club. He often sends a comment and this time it featured Snoopy and Woodstock.
Then, I spotted my first Pleasant Gap goldfinch. Woodstock?
But the focus of this blog entry is switching from garden features to garden edges.
Back in the winter, I was watching a gardening Zoom class and the woman leading the program talked about the importance of edges. Normally, when I plan a garden, I think about shape and size, the fertility of the soil, and the plants to fill it. Edges. The concept hadn’t occurred to me.
So, I started scouting around. I went to a landscape supply company but the stones and pavers were too blocky for my tiny home and yard, too heavy (for my car to carry and me to place), and too pricy.
Last summer I used leftover tiles from my parents’ atrium flooring—aqua-colored hexagons made in Mexico—for garden stepping stones. If I gathered them, I thought, I could make a border edge for my shade garden. Almost. I ran short, so I started the tiles on each outer edge and moved toward the middle. There was a 4-foot gap where they didn’t reach, so I filled in with small stones I collected while creating the garden.
After several weeks, I noticed that it was much easier to mow the lawn along the edged shade garden. I really did need to edge the other two.
I can’t remember where I was, but I overheard a fellow talking to his daughter, saying he was going to look for a doorknob at the ReStore. Light bulb moment.
The Habitat for Humanity ReStore for Centre County is just a few miles from my house in Bellefonte. The store receives household donations and leftover building supplies from contractors. Then the items are re-sold. Proceeds go toward building affordable homes in the Centre Region. Perhaps I could find tiles for my garden edges and support a good cause.
Sure enough, there were two shelves filled with boxes of flooring or wall tiles. I found a box of rustic tan 6”x6” tiles for $10 and decided to give them a try. The next day, I laid them out, scraping back the mulch and tucking them under mounding thyme along the edge of my elderberry garden. Success!
The next week, I returned to the Re-Store. The 12” tiles seemed too big and there weren’t any 6”. So, I settled for a box of glossy gray tiles, 4”x4”, for $7. Within an hour or so, my third garden was edged.
Maybe it’s time to put some edges in your life. Laurie Lynch