Mojo (Zen) Gardens

On my last day in Little Lepreau, I got into a difference of opinion with one of my band mates. Like me, she had collected many rocks from the beach. Unlike me, she had also collected other objects like pieces of wood and shells. She began arranging them and re-arranging them, occasionally having artistic flares of temper: "that's just not right!"

I suggested that she could make presents for people by bundling her found objects with sand and letting them make Zen gardens with them.

"I don't see it with sand," she said.

I gently tried to convince her that sand is the way to go, but she had closed her mind to sand.

Okay, I thought, I was gracious enough to let her have one of my brilliant ideas, but if she doesn't want to run with it, I will. The next morning, just before driving away, I filled a large coffee can with sand from the beach.

Back at home, I did some research on zen gardens. I learned that they should probably be called "Japanese rock gardens" because they have existed in Japan for a long time and it was an American who gave them the "Zen" title in 1935. Oh, oh, I thought, if the Japanese are behind these things, there are probably complex rules about the elements and their arrangements. That's no good for me.

So instead of making Zen gardens or Japanese rock gardens, I make mojo gardens.

What does a mojo garden need?

• A container with some mojo (illustrated here: a box made from Lego and a gutted answering machine)
• Sand collected from a special beach (optional step: to get a nice consistency with the sand, you can filter it through a collander)
• Objects like rocks and shells from that beach
• Other objects with mojo

What can you do with a mojo garden?

• I plan to keep mine on my desk at work. I will rearrange the objects or rake the sand during long phone calls.