Thanks socks. I thought that too. I have a fake little "pond" that I made out of a black and blue granite tile from my kitchen. It's cute. It has a little ceramic frog sitting on it. (No real water feature yet...) Every once in a while I step on it so I don't squash the plants around it as I weed. I will use them sparingly as stepping stones- not in a path- and make sure that they don't stay sparkling clean. I'll let the mulch scatter on them and plants creep up and then there will be something beside the stone to step on.

Ok, Third idea.. I was trying to think of things I could do with this beautiful stone that is otherwising going to be wasted, and pushed in a hole and buried. I thought of building a large outdoor fireplace. I'm building a deck now that'll be about 500sqft+a 12ft gazebo attached at one corner. I have one long side, 13 feet long that I was just going to have a bench on. (No railing because it'll only be about 20" off the ground. My plan: Pour a 4" concrete pad, the size of the fireplace. It would be about 4ft front to back, and probably 6 ft wide. Use cement blocks, and some mortar, and building up the skeleton of the fireplace from the pad. It would probably come up to about 4 or 5 feet above the deck surface. I'd use these granite countertop chunks, different sizes, to cover every visible surface of it. even the inside of the fire box would be a wider slab across the bottom, and the sides and top also built up. I could flare out the sides from the fire box, so the flames reflect lots of light off the gorgeous stone all the way to the edges. I could either do a shurt chimney, or slant the roof of the fire box to direct the smoke out the back side, leaving a small rear opening at the top of the fire box on the back for smoke to exit. I may even design it with the idea of adding gas in the future, though it would have to be an LP tank cause there is no gas on our street. Would this idea work? Would chunks of 1 1/4" granite be too heavy to mortar to a block face? Would the whole thing be dangerous with its weight, or the fact that it would be sitting up next to the deck? I could design it so that the actual fire box sits a couple feet back from the deck, with a "hearth" extending just to the edge of the deck and then maybe another foot of stone "hearth" actually sitting on the edge of the deck. (Minimize sparks hitting my wood deck. Any suggestions or ideas??? Thanks for reading my post.

Scattering ashes in the Sacramento cemetery is not allowed, even if mixed in with the mulch! The Sacramento cemetery has a lovely stone marked "Alice." It's in the plot with Blanche de Belgique, and tugs at my heart because my gardening grandma's name was Alice. She's buried in a Victorian-era cemetery in Hamilton, OH, with beautiful pink granite upright markers, but there are nothing but shrubs and trees throughout the cemetery. Not a flowering plant in sight. She'd have loved having roses at her grave. Stockton Rural Cemetery is still actively burying people, and has quite a few roses there, so it may be a northern California option. The cemetery in Santa Rosa is planning to replant old roses, working with Gregg Lowery - he and Phillip had collected roses there years ago, mapping out where they got them, and now there is a chance to reinstate them. There's also a "green burial" option, such as offered in Mill Valley at Fernwood - no roses, but a more natural approach. I read a book called "Stiff" by Mary Roach - not for the weak of stomach! - and it described an initiative to compost bodies in Sweden. It has a certain gardener's appeal, doesn't it? As for myself, I plan to have my ashes taken to Fletcher, OH, where I will join my folks and grandparents, in a little rural cemetery near a covered bridge. I'm with Connie - I want my remains in a spot, even if no relative ever visits it. I go to the cemetery every time I come back to Ohio, not to preview my future resting place, but to pay my respects to my mother and dad. It may or may not be morbid to have these thoughts, but when you spend as much time in cemeteries as I have, it's unavoidable. Anita

It could work, but if your eating most of your meals there, don't put a trash unit in the island (ya know, some trash smells don't blend well w/ dinner aromas). Also, if you and your family plan to hang out there, you definitely want bar stools w/ backs. No back leads to back strain for longer periods of time, than say, eating a quick bowl of cereal.