How Pebblewood got its Pebblers

Pebblewood takes up about a third of our garden. At the top of it stands a Weeping Willow, planted twenty one years ago on my birthday with my whole family there, and it oversees everything beneath it.

The rest was built more slowly, and out of something harder. The road at the front of the house was widened over three years. When it was finished we took back what we could: timber from trees that had stood a hundred years, and an electricity pole left where it fell. The timber became a fence. The pole became the entrance arch. Pebblewood grew up around them.

We were sitting out in it one warm, misty evening. The light was going through the trees, the birds were settling, and by rights the place was going quiet.

It did not feel like that. It felt as though it was becoming busy in another way. Not with people, but with small caretakers coming out to begin their evening's work.

We called them the Pebblers, and took our name from theirs.

They are not us. Joe and I make every piece here ourselves, by hand. But something about Pebblewood has always felt looked after, and they are the closest we have come to a reason.

Pat