Spring 2013 Projects: Rock Wall

I married a man of many talents. He doesn’t cook or clean if he can worm his way out of it, but he fixes things and builds things and takes fantastic photos. These photos are mine, not his, so photography judgments aside, here’s the latest thing he’s made me.

After my meager attempts to begin a flower bed last year (See lavender and dianthus plans in the background.) Blaine jumped in and made me a real dirt flower bed. I only had to use the pick for one plant. (Near the back, where the dirt got thinner and the rock shelf we live on was arguing with me.) Every single plant I planted last year required the pick and a ridiculous amount of labor. Blaine, compassionate that he is (and lover of outdoor beauty – and me) maneuvered his pickup oh so carefully up the back pasture to get the rocks. If you could have been a fly on the wall during that ride… you’d have splatted against the windshield. It’s ridiculously rough, full of brush, and all uphill. Flooring the pickup and avoiding trees as he bounced up the hill, I gained a new respect for my husband’s driving abilities. And so, the rock wall was built.

After composting all year, we had a nice pile of rock-free dirt. We moved it down to the front of the house and today I planted flowers. Very fun.

The new rock wall looks remarkably like this one, that he built for me last spring:

(Don’t mind the perennials. Spring is still working on springing. I should have wrote this post in a month.)

It also looks a lot like this one, built last summer around the non-bearing cherry tree Sterling insisted his Daddy needed for Father’s Day:

We seem to have a theme going on. And a lot of rocks.