rock edge

This is what I've been working on. Straightened out the rock edge for the side bed in the backyard. Not going to dig the rocks in to make them level in the ground until I'm satisfied with the placement. And there's still grass behind them to pull. I've also been shifting a few of the stepping stones, and dug in to lie level some of long ones that go up the smaller sideyard, and clipped back some of the wild chrysanthemum to even it out, stuck the stems in the ground other side of that yellowish dwarf cypress, but I don't know if they'll take, Might be better to do that kind of thing in spring. The two paler gashes going out into the lawn, is where my husband helped me remove some of the old tree roots that were aboveground.

And then I started with the rest of the rocks. Been wanting to do this for a long time. My husband collects rocks and fossils, often going out to locations himself, so he brings home a lot that get broken open or chiseled apart and then discarded if the find isn't as great as he'd hoped. So, we've had piles of those rocks in crates all around under our deck. 

I was tired of looking at them. And of leaves gathering in those corners in the fall, hard to clean out. Decided to try and make a little mow strip out of the rocks, so I don't have to trim grass against the edging by hand after mowing the lawn. I actually got one side of the first bed done today. 

It needs a little filling in still. There's lots of much smaller rock bits in the gravel under our deck- some of those are on the edging in the above pic- which I wedge in between the larger ones, where they didn't meet flush as I'd like.

This might not be permanent. All the bigger rocks I dug into the ground so they're pretty stable - and holding the bed edge from slumping again perhaps. Some go several inches down. But the smaller ones on top, some are quite thin or fragile and will eventually get broken from being stepped on. Well, I'll just replace if that happens. It's like putting together a puzzle with nature- and one with no guide!