Use the Rocks

It's weird how much of a contrast there is between my old gardens and these new "gardens" that I am having to start from scratch -- my old house had lovely, loamy soil, in part because I'd amended it with composted goodies for years and mulched it into richness, and in part because it was shady and had thick tree coverage in the back. The new house? It's sandy (like Dust Bowl sandy) and where it's not sandy it's clay, and in between that is a thick layer of rocks. Big rocks, little rocks, most of them around cobble size.

In short, it's real shitty soil for planting things.

On top of that, we have voracious deer who have discerning palates -- tons of black raspberry and weedy things EVERYWHERE, but nooooooo, they have to eat flowers. Mostly ones that are on the "deer don't eat" lists. So I have to plant things and cross my fingers that they will actually take.

Oh yeah, and we have black walnut trees, which make the soil toxic. The roots, bark, dripline, nut hulls...they all give off this compound called juglone, and it basically asphyxiates plants that are intolerant.

Finding a list of plants that are both deer-resistant and walnut-friendly is a little challenging, and then you add in the rocks, and the crap soil, and the vigorously growing poison ivy... it's not exactly super hospitable. More like a Garden Of Poisonous Things than the amazing opportunity for planting my own personal botanical gardens that I'd thought it would be.

But, I am slowly trying to work with this difficult canvas and make things pretty.

This week, my project was creating a garden out of this incredibly weedy, very steep hill along our driveway.

Oddly, I don't have any pictures of it as a weedfest. This was after it was (mostly) weeded and de-poison-ivy'd by the gardener lady I hire to do the highly unpleasant work I don't want to do...

After I dug everything for soil conditioner amendment, roots, and rocks. 

SOOOOOO many rocks. 

It was unbelievable how many rocks were in there. My shovel is all scratched up as evidence. I was so frustrated -- WHY SO MANY ROCKS? They slowed me down. They jarred my shoulders when I hit them and they didn't budge. They interfered with my hole digging for all the plants I wanted to get in the ground. It pissed me off. 

But then, I realized... I can be mad at these rocks for existing, or I could USE them for something and give them a purpose. They didn't have to just be pains in my ass. They could serve a purpose, help me retain soil on the slope. 

I am no mason, but I made little rock walls to try to mini-terrace things where I planted the plants that supposedly can handle deer and walnuts.

There it is, planted up so far with shady plants on the left and sunny plants on the right, and tiny rock walls in between.

Rocks! (and porcupine grass, yarrow, echinacea, and wild bee balm)

Sunny side with rocks! (and strawberries & cream ribbon grass, astilbes, and coral bells)

I hope when I mulch it all that I can retain the rock "walls" as I really like them. I like them because they are functional, and decorative, but also because they were something frustrating and unpleasant that I was fighting, and I figured out how to use them in a way that gave them purpose and even made me appreciate them in a weird sort of way.

I'm better at doing this since the whole infertility experience -- having things be not the way you expected, and then using the unpleasant things to build something beautiful. In our life, we took our sorrow and our loss at not having children (which is still there, just like the rocks), and then found a way to build a new life where we look at how we can enjoy the things that are the flip side to having children. We are fortunate, and have our lovely house, and our jobs that we love (but that take up much of our time), and the ability to have a pretty peaceful, low-key existence that I did not think was possible when we were striving for a different sort of life. I felt like it would be a barren field of rocks, horrible and craggy. When the rocks just kept coming and I realized I was not going to have exactly the garden I'd hoped for, I found a way to coexist with them. And plant pretty flowers around them that I can enjoy.

I guess what I'm saying here is, I could let the rocks piss me off and put them in a pile somewhere like a weird burial ground and have it ruin my day and my gardening plans, or I could take the rocks and try to use them for good. I was still ticked to have to dig them all out, but once I figured out the border idea I actually looked forward to finding more for my "wall."

Now that I'm further out from the rawness of our experiences, I can appreciate the power of this perspective even more.