Relative Something

While Cyndie and her mom were in town, shopping for a new gas range for the kitchen, I went out for a walk around the property and came to the spot where Cyndie and I created a labyrinth in a wooded space off the driveway. The pathway was barely discernible. Knowing the general route, I made my way to the center and found it to be reasonably intact.

I removed some of the growth that had sprouted there and rebalanced a couple of rocks before taking the picture. Now, if only the rest of the pathway looked so well defined.

To my great joy and some dismay, there is a strong presence of trillium growing without any concern for the path. The flowers have mostly wilted by this time, but that doesn’t make it much easier to switch my mindset from adoring them to plucking the sprouts from the earth.

We have been tending to the pathway multiple times each year, but not being around in the early spring has allowed the forest to make great gains in reclaiming its territory. We’d like to accomplish a better-established walking trail in the least invasive way, so a little extra tending each spring is to be expected.

A feature that I really like with this little labyrinth among the trees is that the borders that define the pathway are much wider than the walking lanes, which is the opposite of our labyrinth at home. There, the border is a narrow line of rocks creating wider walkways. It had to be that way at home since we were fitting an 11-circuit pattern into a defined available space.

Since our pattern up here at the lake is only 3 circles around the center, we had plenty of room to make the natural alleys between paths much wider. Thankfully, that is allowing the ferns, ramp onions, and trillium in the area to thrive.

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