A rare jewel in the crown of life is being surprised, right? It's especially nice when that surprise exceeds expectations.
Let me elaborate. I've lived in my house for twenty years, so I figured I knew just about everything there was to know about the place. The good: its turn-of-the-century charm and generations-old plantings (I like to think someone's loving great-grandmother christened the place with the rose bushes on the property's perimeter). The bad: the constant upkeep and idiosyncrasies, like the poor drainage in the back and side yards, no matter how many pipes we maze around the house, and the way water finds its way around our chimney regardless of the extensive mortar pointing my husband has layered around the bricks. The ugly: unfortunate renovations by previous owners, like the linoleum kitchen floor and house addition that neglected to incorporate a front door (these have long since been corrected, thank goodness!). Through it all, I've developed a bond with my property--a decades-long friendship, you could say.
Last week, my "old friend" surprised me with a fantastic, unexpected gift: a rock wall that I never knew existed. While digging along the back corner of the property, trying to level the ground around the forsythia hedge in order to incorporate a nice, tidy place to stack wood, I hit a large rock. Then I hit another one. And another. The rocks were a nice, flat, rectangular shape. By rock number six I was pretty sure I'd struck a gardener's version of buried treasure. By day's end I had dozens of beautiful, stackable rocks. They were not all easy to extract from the earth, since they were about 8 inches down, and many tree roots had actually grown on top of them, but the effort was well worth it.
Time to build myself a new wall. But how to stack up the stones so they'll last through the next few generations? Time to go "old school" via a bit of high-tech help: YouTube. After viewing half a dozen how-to videos, I got the gist of it, and tried it out myself. Here's how:
I separated the stones into four groups: large base stones, medium-sized flat and chunky stones, small rocks, and mid-sized flat, smooth-sided stones to use on top of the wall as capstones. I then set to work, laying out all the boulders and other large stones along the perimeter of my driveway. Next, I created a corner by "weaving" flat stones on top of each other (one stone with the pointed end facing east and the next stone's point facing north, then repeating the process).
Next came the flat and chunky stones, moving each piece around over and over again until it "locked" into place (making sure nothing wobbled). It reminded me of fitting puzzle pieces together. I was careful to ensure there was no shifting of stones as I placed them. If I couldn't get a rock to lock in, I temporarily discarded it. This part took a long time to complete. When I finally finished this step, I took handfuls of the small rocks and pebbles and stuffed the into cracks between the larger rocks. The stones acted as a sort of an organic glue, keeping uneven edges supported.
Finally, I finished the wall with the slim, smooth-edged capstones. Then I stood back and admired the fruit of my effort, and smiled, with the oft-quoted line from Frost's most famous poem running through my mind: Something there is that doesn't love a wall....
No comments:
Post a Comment