jones.grace•18d agoOG Member

My cracked sidewalk slab turned 10 years old last spring and I just noticed it

I have a front walkway slab that developed a hairline crack back in 2014, and over time the moss and pattern inside it started looking like a map of the Mississippi River. Last April I counted the years and realized this accidental artwork has been growing for a full decade right under my feet. Has anyone else had a piece of accidental art suddenly hit a milestone age that made you see it differently?

2 comments

2 Comments

linda_mason8218d ago

Did you ever try to stop the crack from growing, or did you just let the moss do its thing? I wonder if there's a lesson in watching something slowly turn into art without meaning to. Sometimes it's the stuff we ignore that ends up being the most interesting.

barnes.morgan18d ago

Moss doesn't actually grow on concrete, it grows on the dirt and debris that collects in the crack. So really the moss is just filling in the space the crack created, not making the crack worse. That concrete is still slowly failing from freeze-thaw cycles underneath all that green. But yeah, you're right that the stuff we stop paying attention to can turn into something beautiful. My back patio has a crack that's been slowly filling with clover for three years now and I like it way more than I ever liked the plain concrete.