Slow garden...
I'm growing a path.
I wanted a path and I looked at “how to make a garden path” online and found lots of directions for putting down pavers or gravel and... that's heavy.
I want a path that is soft and alive and smells good when I walk on it.
So I decided to grow a path.
After researching no-dig garden methods I started saving up cardboard boxes of similar size for a year. Then once my time was freed up in November, I figured out how to do the math and mark out the long arc that I wanted to cut across the yard and to the edge of the woods where I want to build a wooded walking path/labyrinth.
Spouse helped me measure the arc and mark it out, then I had to figure out how to get my layers down and wet. This stumped me briefly as I'd already winterized the outdoor water system and didn't feel like hauling that much water from inside the house.
Then it rained. I set out the cardboard next to the path and let it rain for a day. After that I flipped the wet cardboard into place on the wet grass and let the rain get the other side.
After that it snowed some, so I started moving loads of leaves from my compost heaps. Snow mixed in with everything and I piled it all along the route of the path.
Today I finished the layer of leaves and decided to break up my mushroom patch from this year. Oddly enough, when a very wet pile of hay and mycillia sits outside in the freezing weather, it freezes into a solid form. I flipped this form off of its raised table surface and broke it up with a wood-splitting maul. The chunks are now spread along the path.
Next I'll gather the grass that has been in the compost tumbler since mid summer. After that, a layer of the composted leaves that were under the fresh leaves that I already pulled off of that pile. I'll mix in some blood meal to increase the nitrogen in the blend and hopefully there will be plenty of snow and melt to sog everything together and let it cook quietly all winter.
As I was working today I thought back to those guides for putting in a path and how those all sounded like weekend projects for people who 1) can afford to buy a pallet of pavers and a couple tons of gravel and 2) have the physical capacity to do that much work in a weekend.
I don't have the physical capacity to do that, and I don't have the physical capacity to do all of this in one go. I can do about an hour of work at a time, but I plan every step so it requires the least amount of work and it takes me three or four days to recover before I can do another hour of work.
But, those guides. They end up with a path that looks like a product. Like some kind of professional landscaping. Shiny and paid for. Like.... I don't know... fast gardening.
I want my path to look like it happened to grow there. That takes time. I know that it probably won't look like I want it to look and feel for three or four years. I'm okay with that.
Thinking about this, I turned to look at the path. I saw the mycelium and hay. The hay that probably grew last year, and the mycelium which spread and grew this summer, but comes from a long line of mushroom that stretches back for thousands and thousands of year.
I saw the leaves that I'd collected this fall. The leaves that fell from the oak and maple trees that were fully mature large trees back when my father first moved to this house almost 80 years ago. The leaves that have been on the compost heap, the youngest one we've been working. That heap was started over 25 years ago.
Slow slow slow gardening.
I finally have five year plans and ten year plans and twenty-five year plans and they're mostly centered around nurturing yards and trees and stands of wood.
It fits my tastes for my home and it fits my physical capacity for work. What could be better. Every bit of it takes time, but I find it beautiful at every stage. My gardens and my yard and my paths and labyrinth will never be “done”. But they will all be beautiful and a joy to work with at every stage. That is enough for now.