Playing God
Yard work can be considered a chore. So much in life depends upon the angle of view. Yard cleanup in the aftermath of winter is labor. That is a given. In contrast to mind-work, which ultimately ends with my fingers on this keyboard, staring at a glowing LCD screen, yard-work-done-right culminates with soil under my fingers, and with the weight of stone in my hands. It is not that one is “better” than the other. Both are necessary, aspects of life. I think the yard work is primary though, with kinship to the great ongoing rhythm of the earth in its phases of axis-tilt, of winter, spring, summer and fall.
I settled in, leaning into the wheel barrow loaded with 100 pounds of merrimac stone gravel, and a half dozen pieces of field stone approximately 10 inches by 4 inches. The objective was to clean and refresh a bed under the sculpted cedar bush at the corner of the yard. The old cedar bush serves as the focal point of the property –when viewed by anyone approaching our place by car. It was old when we purchased the place years ago. Am I not obligated to make that cedar as welcoming as I can to anyone who approaches?
With my trowel I dug into the soft earth removing fragments of field stone border, de-laminated by the succession of heat and freezing of many seasons. Stone transforms into soil with enough time. Water, time, and the kneading of temperature works the hard stone into soil a little at a time. I replaced the decayed stone with new sections of border stone.
Next with my trowel I spread a fresh layer of the butterscotch colored merrimac gravel over the uneven surface of the older crushed rock.
Satisfied, I and the somewhat less heavy wheel barrow moved to the backyard. Another bed, the one under the Tiger Sumac needed attention. I straightened and shored up the stone border. A small gap in the stone remained and it seemed right to fill the gap with some pebbles shaped oval and smooth by wave action of Lake Michigan. Waves massaging the shore line for some hundreds of years polished these rocks. A few small pebbles would juxtapose with the quarried field stone. Some moments were needed to select the pebbles from those on hand. Pebbles sized and of a shape that filled the gap were chosen, which also satisfied my sense of beauty and proportion.
How fun to play God……
