My oldest son and daughter-in-law live literally one block away from me, over the river and through the woods. To see them emerging from the stippled wooded land behind our house onto the grassier “meadow” of our backyard is to imagine that I indeed live beside an enchanted forest. The only problem is that sometimes, when they come, the ground is wet, muddy in parts. So I have determined that my project for the summer is to build them a path.

First I had to determine who would do this. It quickly became apparent that to contract with a yard company would cost way too much. Besides, I had discovered two summers ago that while gardening was not exactly my cup of tea, heavier-duty yard work - moving stones, improving soil, composting, raking, working with wood, did have an appeal. So, in an effort to (1) provide a dry passage for my children, (2) create an even more enchanted backyardscape, (3) get a good summer’s workout and (4) enjoy that satisfying sense of accomplishment at the end of summer, I determined to do the backyard “improvements” myself. What I didn’t realize was how much it would (re) connect me with the particularities of this place. Through this work, I am seeing, sometimes for the first time, how radically the tracks of the sun change from month to month and season to season; how the land was used in lifetimes before me; the literal lay of the land and the subtle ways it swells and recedes; the bugs I like and the bugs I don’t.

Second I had to figure out what to do. What kind of trail would I make? What track would it trace? What would it be made of? Again, cost made this decision easy. Bricks, pavers, slate, slab, tiles all would be too expensive. So I settled for a combination of packed dirt for the wooded area and crushed stone for the yard. I found a great vendor out in Timonium. They delivered the 10 tons they said I needed for my job (!) in three hours. Just what the impatient diy-er loves!

I laid out the path with my garden hoses (everything can multitask), used my excess stone left over from the renovation 9 years ago as edgers, and voila, the project was underway.

Some things to keep in mind: almost all the internet sites that tell you how to make a stone path tell you to put down a plastic liner. I didn’t. It seems to me that we want to move away from impervious surfaces and allow the rain to seep into the ground wherever it can! So I dug my path, edged it with large stones and dropped in the stones (ah, the blessing of a wheelbarrow). Then comes the raking, perhaps the most physically and emotionally gratifying part of the enterprise. Raking the stones into place, spreading them around, pushing and pulling them here and there to even them out feels like giving the earth a back rub. You can almost feel the earth settling in, softening up, accepting this gift of tending. If the earth could purr, I imagine it would.

And while all the sites tell you to dig out 4 inches of dirt the length and breadth of the walk, they do not tell you what to do with it!! So, the good news is that we have bald patches of yard and awkward ridges and valleys left over from the heavy equipment used during the renovation years ago. I found that if I in-filled the gulleys with the dirt from the path, not only will the ground smooth itself out a bit, but the grasses from the “sod” will take root in the bald areas. So all in all, I get to have my path and seed the lawn too.

Next steps: continue to add to the fantasy. Home should always offer a bit of enchantment, even in the midst of the most familiar and mundane. We can be our own dream-weavers. So I will try to make gateways of fallen wood - twigs and tree limbs - that mark the threshold from yard to wood and from path to meadow; gateways that feed the imagination.

Homes should always be portals to enchanted worlds! Paradoxically, it is through reconnecting with the particularity of place that we are transported to the enchantment beyond.