Moving Rocks II

It is a fresh winter day with a gusty norwester, wind chill of minus ten, blue harbour, white-capped waves, and darker squalls moving across the water. B’s small boat is plowing its way in to the Cove, probably with fresh lobster aboard, and the Hapag Lloyd container ship, Dresden Express, is just sailing in, bright spray splashing off its bow bulb, with the pilot boat just behind, likely glazed with ice the way waves are flying over its bow. It’s a sunny cold December day of blue skies and white puffs of travelling cloud with occasional flurries of snow rushing through.

Yesterday provided me with the bit of mild weather I needed to complete a few of those leftover tasks that winter will prevent. The dirt pile next to the walkway has been leveled, with the extra soil wheeled to some low-lying spots that needed filling, and all of the squills and grape hyacinths are now planted. Our granddaughter A. helped me move dirt and get rid of the rocks with a small scoop and plastic bucket, until she discovered the physical joy of tree climbing in our small but strong magnolia. We also checked out the possible site of a small treehouse I have been thinking about building in among the pines; she had some good ideas!

But the walkway is really the story here because I can now call it finished, at least until spring when we develop a herb garden next to it, do some encouragement of lawn at its upper edges, and figure out what to do about the two large red pine stumps on one side of it.

The process of building it, like my progress at moving the firewood into the shed, was slow. In fact, when I look at my post of June 30 about moving rocks, I can see that I had already started to dig out the path for the walkway and get some of the rocks organized for it. Besides figuring out and excavating where the walkway would go, I had to move the huge rock that was to become the first step from the driveway to the walk. I did that with sheets of plywood, pipe rollers, and Stephen’s big pry bar, but needed the assistance of our friends L. and E., who had come early one Wednesday for a walk before dinner, to help me maneuver the rollers and push it up the slope to its position at the near end of the driveway.
There was plenty of digging and leveling, cutting roots back, wheeling gravel, prying out two huge rocks that turned out to be in the way and much bigger than I anticipated, and stopping often to measure and align. It was good to work on it, but the fun part really started with building the wood borders out of treated 4x4’s fastened into the ground with pieces of rebar and figuring out the proportions and angles that would work. Once the borders were built I could start on the bed of crusher dust and begin the work of laying rocks, a process that took a lot of placing and re-placing, shifting and leveling, and calculating as I moved toward the driveway whether I had enough rocks to finish the job and how they would all line up.

Now it is done, and the dirt piles are leveled.
My mother has navigated it with her walker and pronounced it good, and various people have told us that they liked the look of it, so now I just have to wait for a decent snowfall and see how easy it is for shoveling.