It’s a fine line
It’s been a spell since I’ve sat down to blog, so perhaps there will be a fair amount of spew here. (ugg! Meta blogging! I’ll stop that right now.)
Life has been exceedingly busy. The juggling act sometimes gets too much, and I get paralyzed. To cope with that, and to keep from being completely idle, I’ve been doing grunt work. Total grunt work. It is good for the soul and sometimes it is just what the doctor ordered. (But, now it seems I need a chiro up in here ASAP.)
Behold the magic of rocks…
We are putting in a new garden. The spot where we had our veggie garden last year was miserable.
Since most of our yard is very slopey, we needed to do something to keep things put. I had a few rocks here and there, outlining the new patch, all shoddy like. And I said to Mr. Pipps, “Hey, can you help me get some more rocks.” Next thing I knew, we had a stone wall in progress. Now, I say we here, but this type of thing is the mister’s forte, his thing. Which, isn’t surprising.. He is like a rock in many ways. Cold, hard, and you have to hit him with a hammer really hard to get him to break. There are more photos on my flickr set “And it stoned me” . It may not seem impressive, but it is to me. We gathered each stone either from the woods, or the river. A real hands on project.
As I had mentioned, Mr. Pipps really excels at this type of thing. I got quite discouraged when he had a six foot section complete, and I was still plugging away at my 12 inches. So, I took on a different project, left the wall building up to the expert, and fiddled with the creating of this.
Eh.. Eh, but functional… It comes off of our back stairs and will help keep the mud out (hopefully.)
Again, all those rocks were hauled out of the earth with my two hands, and I collected all of little river stone myself, buy putting on my mud boots, getting in the river, and shoveling stones into a milk crate to filter out dirt and stuff that was too small. One can only hope I did a good job at laying the guard stones, and all the little river rock won’t wash away with the first heavy rain.
I do wish it would hurry up and get just a bit warmer. It looks like we will still be in danger of frost for the next few weeks. (We had some last night & the night before.) Luckily, peas are hearty.
(and weeds… weeds are hearty, those little effers.)
Goodness, I have so.much.more. to say.
But, my brain is so scattered, there is no way for me to cohesively put together all of my disjointed thoughts.
Hopefully next time I am able to pop my head up from work, I’ll be able to string together what I have in my brain, before it slips away. (And, I feel guilty blogging when I have a ton of writing to be getting done, preparation for the class I’m teaching on Sunday, laundry & dishes to wash, and children to entertain.)
♥
that wall is awesome! I love dry stone walls. I love anything to do with lugging rocks around and arranging them, really…I envy you!
May 4th, 2007 | #
Gorgeous stonework Pippi
Ditto on the juggling act - I feel like I’m meeting myself coming back at the moment…and achieving squat to boot!
Sending you warm weather vibes..
May 4th, 2007 | #
Initially I felt kinda sorry for you having to do all that “grunt” work, but then I saw the beautiful rock wall (looks almost like horse country), then you let it slip you have a river readily accessible (here we would probably call it a creek)
and then I see your beautiful peas. It is all good!!!! Do you rent out Mr. Pipps?
May 4th, 2007 | #
That wall is inspiring! I’ve been working on some yard stuff here, but certainly nothing as advanced/involved as you. And no collecting rock on my own, we’re going to have to have a load of it delivered (damn city life!).
May 4th, 2007 | #
that looks incredible!!!
we are going to attempt a fire pit with all the limestone we can gather around here…
awesome1 and great flower pic!
May 4th, 2007 | #
Wow - great job! I know how hard it is to build with stone. I’ve been attempting to create something like this myself. Thanks for the inspiration to keep going!
May 4th, 2007 | #
I love stone walls! Worth every sore back muscle. Why is there not enough time in the day to get everything done???
May 4th, 2007 | #
I’m impressed the wall looks great! Pretty flower too!
May 4th, 2007 | #
hi pippi-so good to hear from you-your rock wall is beautiful! you would laff-hysterically mind you-if you saw my rock walls. my hubby does’nt do this kind a stuff-so it’s all up to me. i keep praying to my irish ancestors to give me guidence in this relm-dry stacking! unfortunately the rocks around here are round. makes it hard to build walls! our property is totally on a hill! i love your rock creation! peas are bliss!
May 4th, 2007 | #
I once built a garden with my husband by lifting rocks out of a farmer’s field and lugging them home in the back of a truck. Note: Rocks are heavy.
It looks great.
May 5th, 2007 | #
The wall is damn impressive. It’s fantastic. Mr Pipps did a great job. And you did a great job on your mud catcher. I thought it looked really arty but it has a great purpose. Hooray!
xoxo
May 5th, 2007 | #
Gooooood lord, girl! I’ve built walls before and I know how much work it takes. You are seriously impressive. And I love the boots in the river sifting stones story. Tis such a nice visual.
May 7th, 2007 | #