A Small Pile of Rocks

Chapter 3

I am not sure my son-in-law knew I was searching for sources for rock, but once again, God was directing the plan.  They had an old pond which was no longer holding water, and the rocks around it made mowing difficult, so since it was just by the deck, the weediness around it was a bit unsightly, and difficult to manage. They decided to remove the rock and for what ever reason, they called to ask if we would like the rock. It was already loaded onto their truck and my grandson was there to help unload it. Oh Yes! I wanted any rock I could get. 

They off-loaded the rock by tossing it into a pile at the end of the drive by the back yard.  It stayed there for a bit while I tried to figure out where best to use it.  Each piece of rock was not heavy. Except for a few pieces, I could pick up pieces and toss them with one hand.  So moving the pile didn't seem daunting to me.  Each time I went out to survey how much rock I had, I was a little surprised at how they had made such a pleasing shape by just tossing the rock off the truck.  It occurred to me, that so many rock walls around old home sites in the mountains, were always of this small rock stacked along a fence line, or by the road.  It often looked, when you found it running through pastures, just like my pile of rock, as if it were just tossed into a long running pile.  Not stacked with deliberation, just tossed to look like my little pile.

I filled in behind the piled rock with clippings where I cleaned up the garden,
Compost from my composter, some cardboard,
dirt from planters, leaves and small twigs. I finally topped it out with some
store bought dirt.

Where the rock ended I piled wood from the downed trees to make an area
where I could compost larger amounts of materials.

We had several lengths of this scalloped border left from years ago,
which I discovered under the vines.  The mulch on the ground was dumped
from the chip trucks which had chipped up the debris from our trees and
our neighbors' over the next few weeks.  They kept their promise to
bring it back for us to use as mulch. They warned it would kill plants if used
as regular mulch. But that was good for me, because I was making paths
with it, and I wanted the weeds and grass in my paths completely gone.  One more item I could never have paid for.

I decided that if I was going to begin to raise a mound out by the ditch, where the Tree people had removed the old Hackberry tree, I first had to have something to hold back the dirt at the base of the mound.  And since I didn't have enough rock yet, maybe I could just pile rock on one end, and use the larger pieces of tree trunk they'd left behind, scattered along the bank, to hold the remainder of the pile, until I could get more rock. Hopefully, a few years later, when the wood rotted into the dirt. 

So, I set out one day to begin moving the pile to the back of the lot.  I determined to just try to toss it and see if I could make that same natural looking curve which the guys had inadvertently made, when they tossed it off the truck. So I made the base a little wider than it would be at the top, and tossing it onto the line I had drawn with the shovel to provide a shape to follow, I brought pile after pile of rock in a wheelbarrow to the site, and just tossed it into place.  In no time at all, I had moved it all, and was surprised that it had done exactly as I hoped. There was the nicely formed shape that curved around forming the end of my mound wall.

I rolled the large tree trunk logs over and piled them around so they also formed the remainder of the wall.  I cleaned the weeds and vine which I didn't want to reappear in the future raised bed, then began shoveling some compost I already had prepared against the back of the rock. I set one of the large feed troughs on the stump of the hack berry tree, and wondered how long it would be before I found myself rebuilding the whole pile when the trunk rotted away.  It was then that I knew, I didn't want to do this over in a few years, so I realized I would need block or something else to raise the feed trough and still allow for drainage. But there it was. The shape walled in for the first mounded planting bed.  It was in full sun, and large enough to include some veggies into the future plantings.

A couple of years earlier I had sold a lot of old Milk crates which we had used many years earlier for the boys to put toys in, stacked on a wall as a shelving unit. It was sort of in style at the time.  I still had one of them, and I bemoaned not having the ones I had sold. Made of the same material as the feed troughs, I thought how good they would have been to stack now and lift the trough to the the level I now wanted them. But alas, that wasn't an option.  So I began looking for them as we passed yard-sales.  It was a start, and I was quite proud to have gotten underway.

We went to garden centers and priced rock.  Hundreds of dollars, and our truck wasn't rated to haul the weight of most piles. I was beginning to think my "free stuff" luck had run out.  So I budgeted a certain amount of money, about $50, to find something I could use to form parts of  the walls to the other two beds, which I needed to prepare. Then I would begin, collecting rock from roadsides, and creek banks here and there, bringing a piece home here and there to fill in the ends, just as I had built my paths in the past. This was my thinking.

  It took a lot of time, but it was fun to discover a rock here and there, where we went birding etc,. from places where it didn't cause wash damage to the environment. And odd rock here and one there. I would just be patient. Because I had to. Buying these expensive landscape materials just wasn't in the budget at the time. 

Odd rock I had brought home from many places,
and all those vines!

One day we dropped by Southeastern Salvage and they had stacks of large wall block on flats.  I wasn't certain I was reading the sign correctly, so I had Jimmy drive by the stacks before we pulled away.  The large blocks were less than $2 each.  My mind begin spinning in its usual mechanical imaginings, as I tried to figure how I could use my $50 budget to buy enough wall block to make a base for two more large areas for mounds.

 One would be where they took down the pine, and one where they took down the dead cherry tree, which had been damaged by the house fire. For days I was out with my measuring tape, measuring and re-measuring the areas, length, width, depth, curve...I figured out exactly how many blocks I could buy with my budget.  I came up with a plan. I would build only the front and back of one bed with the block and only the back wall of the bed on the other bed. Then, using the same block, in a smaller size, which we already had around a pond we planned to remove, I would form the front wall. of the second bed nearest to where the pond wall stood.  Then, so the 3 beds wouldn't look too Although disjointed, since from different materials, I would pile rock in the ends.

Where the Pine tree had been I made two curved lines of double
stacked wall block . Inside was a very pine smelling
dirt into which I could not plant.  I planned to stack rock at each end to match the rock
wall along the raised garden in progress at the ditch. Everything looks so bare and unfinished.

For an entire year, I gathered materials and Jimmy became annoyed that I let them lay there, unused while I tried to prepare the areas a little at a time.  Pulling vines, I had a root snap, causing me to fall hard to the ground, hurting my back. I couldn't get back up for a bit, and this being my second fall, it slowed me down to a crawl.  After the fall, my garden sat there, with piles of materials collected, and I couldn't move it. Over time, I didn't hurt so badly, so I determined to at least stack the wall block. I realized I could roll them, move them with a dolly, and use fulcrums to lift and move them.  So after several afternoons,  I had the skeleton of 3 raised beds. After, one more fall, and rehab, life became one big realization that my dream might never become a reality, if I had to do it alone.

By the end of the season, I seriously needed to plant some shade loving plants, which I had thus far preserved in planters, while I reworked the garden.  They weren't going to wait much longer; they needed out of planters and to be in ground, or they would die in the winter cold.  Too much root, not enough dirt would cause them to freeze.  Those overgrown vines had become my biggest worry.  I dug them up a few feet at a time, not pulling on them to chance another fall. The going was so slow, because I was determined to get all the roots. I certainly didn't want them to be a problem again later.  I used a hedge trimmer to cut them off, so I could see where the stems entered the ground. I then dug with a hoe into the dirt to loosen the earth and pull them away. My back would only let me do a few square feet before I hurt too badly to do more.  So once I got about half of the area around the largest of my shade beds done, Jimmy hired a neighbor to clean out the rest. They did in one afternoon an area that had take me half the summer.

Vinca, Ivy and a ground cover from my Mom's were tightly tangled together.
In Spring my bulbs made their way through the tangle, and I could identify where they were.
So as I removed vines, I also had to dig up bulbs and store them for replanting.

 So I cut my bear Grass, surrounding that bed to the ground, with the hedge trimmers, composted the cuttings, and pulled the remaining vines that had rooted into the border, as much as I was able.  Finally, I had a clean slate, a reasonable plan, some of my materials in place, and plants to plant ready in the greenhouse and in planters about the yard.  So what was missing?  All those tons of dirt I was going to need to plant into all the work. And still, God had not sent me free dirt.

The rocks had been free, and the wall bricks had fallen into my budget. I had been able to work through my injuries to an extent, including a bite from a Brown Recluse Spider - and now it was time to finish it.  Sooooo, I guess I had to believe that investing in dirt was exactly what God wanted me to do.  I was willing to believe he would provide, but if he wasn't going to give me free dirt, where was this free money coming from to buy tons of dirt, and how would I ever move it all with my back?

 I felt like I had that winter to wait on the Lord, so I simply prayed, "Lord you have moved this thing along so far, and have given me a reason to get up and get going, each day excited to see what the day would hold.  So I am fully expecting you to show me your plan for making tons of dirt and a planted garden come in to being next spring. I actually will be in anticipation to see what you are going to do. I thank you in advance, and pray for your blessing, and healing. And for help......"

Then when I walked the garden space I stared at the small pile of rocks which began the whole process, and realized, how far I had come from a pile of brush piled in my neighbors yard, to a garden area, the plants in the greenhouse and in planters about the yard, and the foundation for a new beginning come spring.  Everything was ready, I could not wait to see what God was going to do!.