I worked like a dog for 3 days, but I finally finished my serenity garden. The garden itself wasn't as much of a hassle as the little sculpture I was trying to build. The first time I used a weird kind of glue which turned into a foaming mess all over the tiles. I had to make a second trip to Home Depot for a new set of tiles and some decent adhesive. I got everything glued back together and left it sitting on the front porch to cure while we ran out to get some lunch, but when we got back, I discovered someone had stolen the textbooks I'd been using to weight down the tiles. Totally bizarre, especially seeing how it's the start of summer vacation (who would steal textbooks anyway, especially physics and algebra???). So after taking a timeout to file a police report, I finally got back to putting in the plants.
Putting in the plants wasn't quite as easy as you'd expect from such a tiny space. This is an old house and at one time there was one of those old-fashioned driveways running between the two houses (the kind with two narrow strips of concrete). Well that driveway is still there, about 6 inches down, so some of the plants aren't in very deep. Then my neighbor has a big old tree just on the other side of the fence, so I had to wrestle with its roots every once in a while. Most of the time my pruners and I won, but a few times I had to give in to the tree roots and put my plant some place else. I incorporated several of the rocks we've had piled up in the back yard, and I even made a special spot for some of the flat red rocks we brought back from Sedona. Overall,I think it turned out well. Luckily I can see it perfectly from my office window, because the mosquitoes have decided they like it, too.
