A Good Path…

A good path invites you into a garden for a closer look.

At least that’s my idea for this path which snakes through a larger garden bed. It allows you to get off the lawn and be closer to plants on both sides.

In the spring when I host the World’s Greatest Family Easter Egg Hunt, the little kids quickly discover this path and then proceed to run up and down it once they realize that I don’t care where they walk in the garden.

After all, it’s spring when they are here so plants are smaller or haven’t even broken ground yet. They can’t do too much damage, even if they step on a tulip, because the tulip wasn’t going to be blooming all summer anyway.

The other thing that attracts kids and lures them in for a closer look is this little fairy house.

(I apologize for the wilting ginger plants in the pictures. It’s been dry here.)

It attracts big kids too. I got an email from a reader wanting to know where I got it. I don’t know where it came from because it was a gift from co-workers when I retired. Other than maybe being ordered from Etsy, I have no clue where to buy another one.

I do have a second fairy house in the garage without a roof because the first house they sent had some crumbling concrete on one of the gables when I opened it up so they sent another one, but without a roof.

I kept the first house, and still have it, thinking that someday I would repair that concrete, make a roof for it and have a second house. Seven years later… I did glue the concrete pieces back together earlier this year but the glue was messy and oozed out of the cracks. Now I need to sand off where the glue shows and maybe paint the house to hide it. Then I have to build a roof for it.

Will that take another seven years?

Let’s hope not. But sometimes things do take longer than you think they will.

Oh wait, the actual doing doesn’t take that long, it’s all the time spent thinking about doing it that takes so long.

There’s a quote for that. “It’s the job that’s never started as takes the longest to finish.” – J. R. R. Tolkien.

Which takes us back to that path. I just added a layer of wood chippings and shavings to it yesterday. My brother-in-law brought me three big bags of the stuff from his workshop… on Easter. And just like that, five months later, in 45 minutes, I had it all spread on the paths.