More Rocks...

...this time a beautifully made drystone wall. I have noticed that many cultures have rock walls, and each seems to have put their own stamp on them. With the large stones on the bottom forming the foundation to support the small ones and they very smallest wedged in the cracks to give it all integrity I would say this wall could be a metaphor....

I love rocks. When we took out our small front garden in Berkeley and replanted it we actually went to a place we called 'the rock store', picked out a large rock and had it delivered to the curb. (They wouldn't place it in the garden ten feet away across the pavement...probably something to do with liability) I don't remember how we got  it into place, but I'm sure it was a group effort involving friends and neighbors. I would often find a neighbor's cat asleep in the sun on top of it.

I had a friend who lost her home to the Berkeley Hills fire. She was an artist and a landscape designer and designed a walled Moorish garden for her new home featuring a huge rock and fountain and a little stream that ran all the way through the house and out the other side into an infinity edge pool. 

The story of how that huge rock was transported on a flatbed truck from the rock store on the freeway, through the city of Berkeley, up the narrow winding roads to the site was quite a saga. And it didn't end there. She also designed the house, a Neutra inspired glass structure with a room with specially designed feeding dishes for her two Irish wolfhounds. After several attempts to find another way, the huge rock had to be lifted over the glass house and the wall around the garden by a giant crane.

I would love to have some big boulders on our hill. They look good, they don't require water, they don't get eaten by rodents and they don't die.
We even have a free supply from the house next door, but the problem with rocks remains the same. They are so heavy. The bigger they get, the less they like getting moved. Even if we could get them moved here, we would have to bury them in unforgiving rocky soil lest they roll down the hill into our living room. 

But nice things can be done with small rocks too. I have a jar of them I have picked up here and there. I had another friend who also loved rocks but lived in a small place without a garden. She died an untimely death in a car accident, and at her memorial service in her sisters' rock filled garden there was a dish of small pebbles that Lisa had collected over the years. We were invited to take one as we were leaving. I still have it on my shelf....sort of the opposite of the Jewish tradition of leaving a small pebble on a gravestone.

There is something comforting about the permanence of stone...I think it is probably a mistake to mess with anything bigger than a hand trolley to move....