I'm late as usual getting in the vegetable garden. After many years of adding manure and compost and leaves, the soil is soft and fluffy. But every year, rocks and more rocks. When I first started this garden in 1978, I was pulling out boulders; then large stones, then small stones, now one-inch stones and pebbles. Why do I continue to do so?
Because my father took the rocks out of his garden. I remember once, as a small child, saying to him, "Dad, you'll never get all the rocks out of your garden." "True enough, he replied, "but I'll have fewer rocks" From which response I realized that he was not an idealist but a meliorist, as I am. So every year, a new crop of rocks. I put the rocks on the driveway, in the low spots where puddles accumulate after a rainstorm. It's ridiculous, I know; we order seven cubic yards of crushed stone for the driveway every few years, so a bucket of rocks makes very little difference. But if feels good to perform two useful services at once: rocks out of the garden, rocks on the road.
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