It's gardening, gardening, gardening all the time around here. Rain or shine, hot or cold—I'm out there in my purple gloves and muddy boots. This is a project I finished last weekend on one of those pouring rain days. It's part of the pathway that leads around the garage and into the backyard. This whole area used to be compact, solid weeds and sod and now it's finally starting to come together.
Last year when we were working on the patio pavers, we broke two or three of them in the process. That was super frustrating because those suckers take a long time to cure. But then the Mister suggested we use the broken pieces to make stepping stones for pathways and I loved the idea so much that I wasn't even that frustrated having to drive back to Home Depot for more concrete.
So on a rainy day last weekend, I finally got around to making the path:
First, I laid the stones down where I wanted them and cut around the edges with my handy dandy shovel/cutting tool (the best tool ever, by the way).
I scooped out the dirt as far down as the stones were deep (about two inches in this case) and leveled out the holes as much as I could.
Then I plopped the stones down in the hole and voila! They fit!
Then I just filled in the gaps with extra dirt and stepped on them a few times to make sure they didn't kick up or slide around. (If they do kick up or slide around, you just pick the stones back up and add more soil to the low spots or shave some more dirt off the high spots.) You could be really thorough and use sand and gravel and a level but I didn't feel like getting fancy like that.
I shaped the stones from their original square concrete selves by hitting them with a hammer and chisel. Sometimes I scored a line where I wanted them to break and sometimes I didn't. Sometimes I just hammered away and let the chips fall where they may. All I wanted were some rough edges and natural shapes and I wasn't too concerned about exactness.
Here they are, all together. Of course, I still need to fill in the dirt patches with grass seed and I need to add some ground cover to the empty space on the left under the tree, but the hard part is over.
Pretty good. Pretty natural, don't you think? And in this case, totally free since I already had the broken pavers. But even if you had to start this project from scratch, it would still only cost about $10. Quite worth it, me thinks.
