We’ve been having a horrible time trying to decide where to put things in our yard. ‘Things’ being beehives, fruit trees, garden beds, a bench, a grape arbor, a fire pit, a picnic table, the potatoes, ect.

We finally made some progress through gut reaction (“I feel like the fire pit should go, oh, here.”) and more progress through logic (the bees need morning light and little traffic). But lately we’ve been using elimination to further decisions. The patio should go on a flat spot. There is only one flat spot in the backyard.

Where we’ve really gotten stuck is when we try to plant anything. Do we want strawberries here? Or there? Or maybe two feet to the left? Staying out of the shade knocks out about half the property. Avoiding anywhere where the new septic might go knocks out the entire SE quadrant of the property. Still we have about an acre of places to choose from.

So we started dropping bricks around the yard wherever we walk. From the back door to the shed A drops bricks every ten feet or so. I do the same from the front door to the future patio site. From the shed to the pump. From the house to the mailbox. Now our yard is littered with bricks, but we have established our natural paths. With that information we are able to put in garden beds that reinforce those paths, rather than getting in our way for years to come. It’s helped a little. But, we’ve still only managed to get half the strawberries in the ground.