Lifting rocks

 

 

I have recently come into an abundance of time.

It is actually a little disturbing. 

So, I have started re-orienting myself in my safe place – the garden.

Blooming things provoke joy in me.

 

We’ve got just over a third of an acre, 16 thousand square feet, minus the house.

Living here before us; 13 trees, a few shrubs, a trumpet vine, and some prickly pear cactus.

The ground is sandy and abundant with small stones – not clay, 

and not the caliche concrete that causes gardeners here to despair.

It seemed to me to be ripe for enrichment. Good soil can be made from sand.

 

Then I put a shovel into it.

 

Our home is on what used to be a mesa overlooking the Rio Grande flood plain.

Of course, humans have built all over the plain, and on the mesa – out as far as the eye can see.

We are on the edge, between the two, and our lot slopes down.  

When they built in 1962, they must have leveled the lot - somewhat.

My shovel found out how they did that. River rock. Tons and tons of river rock.

A compacted strata nearly a foot thick, found below 2-6 inches of decades of sand and dust.

It stopped my heaviest shovel with a crunch.

I could have left it alone and built on top.

 

But I am both curious and stubborn – this is known.


So, I got down on the ground with a trowel and started excavating.

Then I found the plastic. They put down a barrier under the rock.

To stop what imaginary weeds, I do not know.

Mostly shredded now by the years – but still there – now and forever.

Sigh.

 

So, one square foot at a time.

I have started hand digging, and ripping out plastic shreds and lifting rocks.

It helps that the rocks are beautiful.

Polished river rock, not from around here: quartz and jasper and granite, and I don’t know what.

It’s a treasure hunt.

I lift and sift, dividing the land into soft root spaces and glistening pathways.

While I am down there, I am burying Alpaca or horse Poo in every hole.

I am topping it with homemade compost.

 

I have been in a liminal space. A waiting. A wondering what's next.

The ground itself has answered me.

 

RIP UP THE BARRIERS

FIND AND LIFT THE TREASURES

BURY THE SHIT

MAKE PATHWAYS AND PLACES TO PUT DOWN ROOTS

 

So I will.


 
 
 
 
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