stepping stones from logs

Last fall, we had the river birch next to our home taken down. River birches are messy trees. This one kept dumping branches on the roof of the house which would end up in the gutters and cause the water to overflow and damage the wood around the front door. The water also eroded the bed where the river birch was. While I loved the look of the tree, I didn’t love seeing my husband climb up on the steep roof to clean up the sticks and gutters.

I asked the tree guys to leave the logs instead of chipping them. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with them; I just knew I needed them. First, my husband quartered some of the logs to make edging for beds. Then I decided to have him slice the logs into rounds for stepping stones.

I don’t like to walk on our flower beds, especially since I’m trying to improve the soil instead of compacting it. I could use boards, but that isn’t a feasible long-term solution. I need to be in the beds to weed and spray for deer weekly.

I started out by buying stepping stones, which are shown in the picture above. While I love the look, it is costly given the number of stones I need. I think the stones were $3 to $4 each.

Then, I realized I could use the logs we had saved as stepping stones. While river birch is not the ideal tree for this purpose, it’s what I had. I wish I had asked to keep the 2 oak trees we had removed. Oak should last much longer, perhaps up to 10 years.

In the meantime, I can slowly replace these log slices with stones. I don’t mind if the logs rot in place since that only helps the soil underneath.