Re: more rocks
Now that we are on the subject, I have to tell you a couple gneiss
stories.
Growing up we lived in the city and our lot had a fairly steep
hill behind us. My father, with his English heritage, was a
gardener and would go out on a Saturday morning collecting rocks.
It was by brother's and my job to unload the rocks from the car
and tote them to where dad wanted them placed.
My next story is how we got our "sitting rock". We were one of
the first homes to be built in our subdivision. There was a creek
a half mile away and in the creek was a boulder roughly 30*24*24.
We talked the plumber (no relation, the spelling is different) who
had a backhoe to go over get the rock and bring it back and
deposit in a prepared hole I had dug in the front woods. I was
working and missed the spectacle of the backhoe followed by a
half-dozen tots following the pied piper. The rock was deposited,
but on edge. I got out my trusty bar and maneuvered to the correct
orientation.
While planting in a small bed in front of the garage, I hit a hard
object. It turned out to be a stone about 30*24*6 which forms the
backdrop for a small pool.
Initially our small front lawn sloped up to a maple on the edge of
the front woods. We talked of leveling the lawn and putting up a
wall. Finally in 1972 after our flood (We were high enough not to
have been inundated), I decided to put in the wall. I started at
one end and had piles of soil, small stones and my wall stones.
There was a small creek which supplied a fair number of rocks.
There was also a house a half-mile away with a stone foundation
that supplied more. Finally there was a rock wall that I had
access to that supplied the remainder.
Along the way I rebuilt the wall by the driveway, the one off the
patio, built another one below the garage, another off the back
porch, which I enlarged when we enclosed the porch and finally a
triangular raised bed in an awkward are in the corner formed by
the garage and porch.
Bill Plummer
Painted Post, New York
Zone 5
