Back in 2000, Edward gave me a rock for my Winter Solstice gift… Not the “wear-it-on-your-finger” type of “rock". A 2200 lb hunk of sandstone. I am a geologist, after all. It was a perfect fit. We had just lost the Canary Island Date Palm in the front yard and we didn’t want to put in another palm, or other tree, as the four oaks we had planted in 1992 had finally started to get big. Another tree would have struggled to get enough light.
We got the rock from a landscape supply company, the type that sells mostly paving type stones, river rocks and other landscape-y types of stuff. Edward had gotten a cubic yard of fill dirt after the stump for the palm tree was ground down and with the help of a friend had moved it from the driveway to the spot where the tree had been. We were ready for the stone, which the seller delivered, which was a good thing since we would never have been able to get it home and placed, no matter how many friends we had. They backed the truck carrying the stone to the pile of dirt and slid it off the truck… Plunk. Sort of leaning and definitely making a statement. I like that. I Am Geologist! See My Rock!
For the next few weeks as people drove by the house we would get looks. You’d think we’s lit a bonfire in the front yard the way people were rubbernecking. It was great.
Over time, though, the pile of soft dirt that the rock sat on settled and the rock settled with it until it was pretty much lying on it’s side. “We should try to stand that up” Edward said one day. That would have been a trick involving the jeep several heavy tow straps and a "come-a-long” if I could borrow one from work. But we never got around to it.
Then, a while back, we were talking to a friend who salvages exotic wood from urban areas, explaining that we needed to stand up the rock. "I can do it," he said. "People I know have winches." Cool! But Peter is insanely busy, and didn’t get a chance to come by… until a few weeks ago. Chris, his wife, called us. “Pete is in the area, and has a little free time, they want to come by and right the rock.” Sure!
These guys knew what they were doing. They move multi-ton tree logs for a living, so they had all the right tools. They backed the trailer with the winch into the front yard at just the right angle, hauled the rock upright, shifted the bottom, braced it with some old hunks of cinderblock, that conveniently came out of the mound of dirt it was sitting on, and settled it into it’s new place. We filled in the back with the dirt that had been in front, packed it down, and 2.5 hours later...done.
Awesome.
We beat the hell out of the ferns growing around it. They’ll grow back, I’m sure. We have a pile of river rocks out back from old flower beds that didn’t work out. I may move a bunch of those up to around the rock to help stabilize it even more. And if I catch the lawn guys, I'll tell them (again) they don’t need to trim the top of the ferns around it. Now that it’s standing upright, the rock will stick well up above anything growing around it. My very own Stele… nearly 17 years to the day I got it.
Morgan Henge Rises! (Ok, it's not a henge... but it just sounds too cool.)
No comments:
Post a Comment