It’s nearly midsummer day, and the area around the labyrinth is flourishing with green growing things: white clover, red clover, common plantain, oxeye daisy, wild strawberry, butterfly bush, and yet more I don’t recognize. There’s more wildlife, too. Yesterday I surprised a few rabbits and fieldmice, and there are redwinged blackbirds, barn swallows, plovers of some kind, and a redtailed hawk in the neighborhood. Last week I spotted a couple of garter snakes.
Longtime readers might expect some sort of mystical argument about what it all means… the energetic presence ofthe stones in this ancient, mystical pattern drew the seeds, the birds and mamals together.
No such luck.
The presence of the stones forces the trucks and lawnmowers to give the area wide berth. If it were just a pile of rocks, I think the maintenance crew might move them, possibly with a bulldozer. But instead it’s art. And so it gets left alone.
A few years ago I was given a couple of geodes by appreciative families. They were large, heavy, and not particularly attractive. Yesterday I brought them out here and planted them in the labyrinth, in hidden ways. You’d have to walk it carefully to find and see them. Like the robins, though, rocks belong in nature, and so these belong here, not gathering dust in my apartment.
Every campus, I’m convinced, has an area that’s pretty ugly. Maybe no grass grows. Maybe it’s too shady. Try building a rock garden, though, and wait a while. You’ll find a wildflower garden, and a home for nature in the middle of campus.
