Katy Dickinson

Creating a Cactus Garden, Part 3 (interviewing rocks)

I have been interviewing rocks. That is to say, I have hundreds of garden rocks of sizes from the diameter of my fist to twice the size of my head, plus many smaller and a few boulders even larger. Most of these are in use but all are being considered for relocation to my new cactus garden. The size, color, and texture patterns of each rock determine whether it gets relocated. Also, if it is still needed where I had it originally. For example, the rosemary border between the house and driveway has overgrown its rock edging so all of those are being wiggled out and moved either to the cactus garden or to replace rocks now in the cactus garden. My son Paul helped me move 40 rocks on Saturday. He said he would rather lift weights.

Some of the rocks came with our Willow Glen house and I moved others from our old house. Still more were collected in our driving trips around California and Nevada each summer. The yellow quartz stone below came from Jake's Creek behind my Great-Grandparents' Elkmont cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. Below are photos of some of my favorite rocks, plus work-in-progress images of the cactus garden.

My neighbor came by to see what was happening. She said that the caboose in the cactus garden looked like Disneyland. I hadn't been thinking of Disneyland as a source of garden design inspiration but I include two photos from Splash Mountain's small cactus garden below for comparison. As you can read in my blog, my daughter Jessica and visited Disney World - Magic Kingdom after participating in the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in October 2007.

Buying more gravel

Dark gravel in arroyito

Starting to place stones

Moving stones

Silver Torch blooms

Trichocereus Carmarguensis Crest

Cactus without nametag

Last barrel cactus

Top gravel placed

Making progress...

Splash Mountain garden 1

Splash Mountain garden 2

Images Copyright 2008 by Katy Dickinson

Posted at 03:49PM Apr 21, 2008 by katysblog in Caboose Project and Other Trains  |