A Pyromaniac's Dream

Welp, worked hard all weekend clearing weeds, filling soil and compost into beds, choosing plants at the local greenhouse, and thinking on how my projects and plantings should go down. The weekend was a success, and I was ready to shoot out the back door the MINUTE C's eyes closed for her nap this afternoon. That was good timing, because it was pretty chilly this morning, and by the time I was ready, it was much warmer, though still breezy. My first project, OF COURSE was the plantings around the fire pit, which was just as much fun as I suspected it would be. I then turned to my two little raised beds on the east side of my house (flanking either side of our entry steps), removing stuff and re-planting both beds to herbs. I had several herbs already in one that are perennial, and some new ones I bought this season. After that, I planted my big flower planters. Then I turned my attention to my new retaining wall project, which will have its own pictures up soon. The coolest thing??? I have now been gardening long enough that I could "shop" in my other flower beds to partially fill the new ones!! I thought that out to a small degree this weekend when I was planning my fire pit plantings. I had bought some lirope (monkey grass) at Walmart last week. I also have a few little clumps of some variagated lirope that I decided I could move and use in contrast to the plain that I bought. It just went from there and all kinds of plants went flying out of their original homes (in part or in whole), to grace a new home!!

To back up a little, I will rehash the creation of the fire pit--in the event that anyone might want to make their own! I think that I mentioned earlier that one of the rock spots we snatched from was a pile of stone from an old limestone house. We found quite a few long, rectangular stones--perfect for the pit. From the start I had in mind a rectangular fire pit, so I was NOT disappointed in our find!!

We also had found plenty of relatively flat rock. We came home with enough to lay down as a small patio/walkway around the perimeter of the pit. J bladed out a big section of the sod and leveled it out. We set the flat rock up against the pit and then filled the cracks with sand. Actually, I am still watering in the sand and trying to get it cleaned off the top of the rock. You'll notice in the "finished" pictures that the stones are not as clearly defined as they are in the pictures of the project in progress. I suppose it will take some time to get all that sand watered in and get it settled down under the rocks. When we finished the patio we backfilled dirt around the edges. That puts the pit probably 12-18 inches above the patio rock--and the inside is deeper. We used some lava rock as the base in the pit.

There's the big man shoveling soil into a low spot.

Truly, I was helping--Grant just happened to get a pic of me in my supervisory mode. See, my REAL job is getting the image from my head to HIS head, and sometimes that just requires standing back, watching, and formulating and re-formulating the plan. (You know--"I know that I just told you to put that there, but NOW I think you should move it over there. . yeah. . way over there--it's OK--Definitely, it will be better over there!") ("BBBLLLEEEEEPPPPP"--had to censor that replied remark back to me, sorry--you just never know who will be reading!)

We also felt like we should mortar the whole thing together. I was a little less than thrilled with how THAT turned out, but I lost--and I didn't want to keep putting them back together. I still think it looks whimsical. To the east we put our stone bench right up against the rock pavers. At the Wichita garden show a few years ago, I saw one similar and was priced for $400. So I keep reminding J about how much MONEY we saved by doing it ourself!! Blink, Blink--no comment. (You'd think he didn't enjoy this as much as I do!) Anyway, there was some blue fescue grass that was growing under the weeds in my raised bed (now harboring lovely herbal plants). So I dug it out, split the clumps up, and planted that perennial interest in my raised rock bed next to the fire pit. To the left of the picture is the monkey grass with the varigated free monkey grass interspersed. In addition, I also split up a clump of strawberry colored daylilies (that was also growing in my old-new herb garden. GENIUS!! The savings are seeming priceless!! It should fill in and look great!! Hoping also that it will keep the grass out of the pavers, and that we won't have mow right up to the rock.

Because the bed is potentially in partial shade (the pit is in between 2 nasty, ugly elm trees looking like they've been through chemo (we had them "trimmed" last summer--HA!) I chose to go with bright white flowers with a splash of pink. I put some white dianthus, hot pink dianthus, some little carnation-looking stuff (perennial) called thrift (never heard of it), some pink snapdragons and white petunias, edged in purple.


And there you have it!! The new fire pit. . just waiting for some marshmallows and a dutch oven cobbler cookin' over an open flame!! Come out and relax with us ANYTIME!