iRock

“Give me a lever, and a place to stand, and I will move the world.” - Archimedes

…and a place to sit and rest, and some good knee pads, and plenty of water to drink. And an iPod to drown out the voices in my head, which might otherwise persuade me to enroll me in their murder-suicide pact. I find it also helps to take my rage out only on inanimate objects. Gardening is good, digging is better, moving heavy rocks is best.

Lately, I moved some BF rocks. It’s taken several weeks, because I can only work one day, then I have to rest two. My knees, shins and feet are covered with bruises and scrapes that make me look like a poster for spousal abuse – from the knees down.

Those rocks are big, and the last time I moved them I was ten years younger. The first picture is from July, 2003. I have a large crow bar is taller than me and weighs probably 30 pounds. I was going to move the entire raised bed area back: closer to the big rock beneath the pepper tree that hides the filter for what we call the old pond. But one border rock wouldn’t budge, and after excavating down six inches without finding the bottom edge, I wisely decided to let that rock stay where it was and work around it. My karma thanked me graciously.

We may put our new bamboo shishi-odoshi there – where our first (bamboo) one once stood about 15 years ago. The one in the first picture (barely visible behind the bench and pine tree) is a crappy resin one that never sounded right. The guy at the bamboo store where we bought the new one called it a "deer-chaser", saying when he used the more accurate translation of "deer-scare", it tended to discourage buyers. Which reminds me of the commercial for Scott’s lawn fertilizer-and-poison where they say the product “eliminates” insects that make your turf yellow. I suppose customers prefer to picture a tiny moving van, packed with all the insect colony’s belongings, moving their household to live on a nice organic farm in the country. Or, would that require them to use the verb “evict” instead of “eliminate”?

I also plan to put in some thyme between the rocks, move my freesia bulbs and perhaps add some more. It will be a few more weeks before I’m done, but I just had to document the labor already invested. I have a lovely vision of the finished product, and I really do rock.