I spent a good part of my summer moving rocks. . .lots of rocks. Last month I finally collected all the rocks I was going to need in yard.
That’s six tons of rocks. I didn’t move them all myself, of course. My son and his friend helped once. The goal was to add three walls to my yard. The rocks were going to be the middle and upper walls. The lower wall would be landscaping bricks.
Well, after hours in the sun, and gallons of water (and nearly equal gallons of sweat,) I finished the walls. Not just walls, but a set of stairs and moving a lot of dirt around too.
I ended up using 160 rocks. In addition there are over 100 bricks. And hundreds of pounds of gravel.
I didn’t realize the fire hydrant was one of those full sized ones.
The steps were the hardest part. They look flat, but the backsides are buried deep into the hillside. They are certainly not square.
At the end of the project I thought about how really, other than the landscaping bricks, this project was simply a matter of rearranging objects that already existed. Each of the rocks came from a site about a block away. There was enough dirt in the hillside that by the time I cut out the space for the wall, the dirt was enough to form the terrace.
How often do we find ourselves in a position where we have all the materials we need to improve ourselves. The hard work is simply rearranging the pieces that are already there.
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Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren. Order Miscellany II, an anthology including his latest short story, “The Mercy System” here
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