Nowadays, walking around the garden in the dazed way of someone who spent the winter inside and has been oblivious to all the damage buried under snow, I’m now noticing lots and lots of moss, in the lawn, in borders and even around the lime-loving lavenders.

Though I’ve occasionally anointed the place with fireplace ashes, it’s been in a random, hit or miss sort of way. Obviously, there is a huge lime purchase in my future. Lime is so heavy and you need so many bags of it to make even a slight pH change, it’s best to pay to have it delivered instead of making many trips in the car to haul it home. If you’re lucky, they will unload the truck and stack the bags neatly for you. The earlier you apply lime to lawn and garden, the better.

Well, when life gives you lemons, make Limoncello. I’m starting to think of moss as a craft supply instead of a horticultural disaster. I’ve got so much of it, I could transplant it and create a moss lawn, but I don’t really have a place for one here. Though it never needs mowing, a velvety moss lawn isn’t really maintenance free, since tufts of grass always pop up in it and need removing. In addition, moss lawns need frequent leaf and debris removal to look really good. Think of a Buddhist monk gently raking sticks and twigs off a moss lawn as a daily meditative devotion and you’ll get what I mean.

I’ve been collecting moss by peeling sheets, clumps and mounds of it off of the soil and lawn with a metal kitchen spatula and saving it on old cookie sheets. It’s amazing how many types of moss there are in one garden. Some are flat and green. Some are silvery and metallic looking. Others are cute little mounds. (After removing the moss, I dress the soil with fireplace ashes to sweeten it and prevent moss from growing there again.)

I’ve collected enough moss to begin making a collection of moss mounds in urns, old  troughs and aged containers. Eventually, I’ll group them together as a shady display somewhere. It’s a free, instant-gratification activity, since you just mound up nasty soil in a pot, pack it tightly and cover it with pieces and clumps of moss to make a sort moss mosaic. You have to keep pressing the moss down firmly to make it stick and then water it in gently. I learned last year that moss containers must have drainage holes (covered with stones or clay pot shards) not because moss needs good drainage, but because without holes, heavy rain makes the soil rise up and float away, taking the moss with it.

Except for maybe pansies, this is the only kind of container you can plant now since it can freeze a little without harm. I think the simple moss mounds look very elegant, in a rustic sort of way. I confess, I shamelessly copied this idea from someone else’s very chic garden.