May 21st, 2009

The rock garden:
How I proved to be one part superwoman

When Brad and I first moved into our house several years ago, I had a mental list of improvements to make to the newly constructed home as we had the money and time to make them.  Items on the list included building a fence, replacing the front door, painting the walls, etc.  Somewhere, the overhaul of the nearly lifeless flowerbed in front of our house was listed.   I actually started the initiative to add color, height and depth to the flowerbed over a year ago and at one time, considered the project complete.  With the onset of spring however, I came back to the conclusion that something was still missing.

So, I devised a new plan- phase II – for the area in front of our house.  This plan, however, posed physical challenges that I could, in no way, achieve alone and Brad was, well, probably away fishing on this particular weekend. So, I recruited some outside expertise, and my unsuspecting sister seemed like the obvious choice. At the age of 5 or 6, she was paid $5 by my grandmother for moving a rock out of her flowerbed (now, if my grandmother were a betting woman, she would have bet Kelly the $5 that she couldn’t move the rock; but being a risk adverse woman, was still happy to pay her granddaughter the $5 for manual labor that she could not do herself).  Kelly had just returned from an extended stay in Georgia, and a little strenuous activity  seemed like a great opportunity to catch up.  Despite what she might have you believe, Kelly willingly agreed to the fully-disclosed manual labor being asked of her.

The project began in the ditch behind the fence in our backyard, where several large rocks had been piled up.  The task: to move several of these rocks to the flowerbed in front of our house.  The challenge most likely appeared quite a bit more challenging than it had sounded in the request over the phone.  These were large rocks and they had to be moved 20 or 30 yards down the ditch, up a not-so-tall-but-relatively-steep hill, over a concrete wall, into the backyard, then another 20 or 30 yards or so into the front yard, and then another 20 or 30 yards or so into the flower bed.  Even with both of our strength combined, these were not rocks that we could lift.  It was a rolling exercise to be certain.

So, we began by selecting a few rocks and rolling them a few paces down the ditch.  We would get a few yards and then turn back and select another one.  We selected three rocks  in all, one of which we determined to be  slightly more ambitious than we were physically capable of after moving it a few yards.  The other two, were not much less than what we were physically capable of moving, but we pressed on.  Multiple times, I thought we were ready to give up – that the project would have to wait until another weekend when Brad was home.  As we approached the concrete wall, I think we were both ready to throw in the towel and defeat seemed inevitable.  We took a moment to rest and I started telling her about the inspiration for this project.

It had come after struggling for some time with how to make the flowerbed more visually appealing.  After countless trips to garden centers and nurseries, I found the inspiration I was looking for in the flowerbed at the house I grew up in.   Many years ago, my mom, I assume in an initiative not very different than my own, gave her own flowerbed depth, height and variety by adding rocks.

Now, when I say, ‘adding rocks,’ what I really mean is that she went down the hill (mountainous in size compared to the hill Kelly and I were facing that day) in our backyard, into the snake infested creek, found – quite possibly – the largest boulders she could find – and proceeded to roll them end over end up the gigantic hill into our front yard and precisely placed into the  flowerbed.  With the exception of a single rock that sat in the middle of the hill in the backyard for a number of years, she must have moved 7 or 8 rocks, many of them being equally as large as the rocks Kelly and I were moving, by herself.

As we reflected on the amazing woman that raised us, we made light of the fact that – at 30 years plus our age – she could still kick our butts physically and routinely took the opportunity to prove it to us by leaving us in her dust in any race we agreed to run with her.

I concluded, “She is superwoman.” Kelly agreed.

I remarked that I wish I had the strength our mom had, referring to, not only her obvious physical strength, but more importantly, her strength of character. Kelly tried to reassure me that I was every bit as amazing as our mother, to which I only replied, “If that were true, I wouldn’t have called you to help move these rocks.”  We sort of laughed, and perhaps feeling a motivated knowing that our mother, once again, was showing us up, proceeded to move the rocks over the concrete wall.  A task that had seemed impossible only moments before.

We proceeded to move them into the front yard, and placed, well, as precisely as they fell, into the flowerbed.

I think I can speak for both of us that I felt a huge sense of accomplishment having achieved the impossible.  As Kelly left with her payment for the manual labor (a measly can of coke zero),  she offered up on last piece of reassurance that I will accept as being true: while we may never be the woman that mom is, my rock garden proved that the two of us together equals one superwoman, therefore we are each, one part superwoman.

The Journey: Original location of rocks

The Journey: Part I, up the hill and over the wall

The Journey: Part II, through the backyard

The Journey: Part II continued, leaving the backyard. Victory in sight

Precisely Placed

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