When we first built here many many years ago, we worked many many hours to clear away enough of those rocks that we could put in a lawn. We had three boys back then… ages 6, 4, and 2. Every evening after my husband came home from work we were all out there helping to pick up the rocks and put them in a wheelbarrow so they could be carted out to the back of the property to be dumped.
When time came to put in the sprinkler system, we rented a trencher, but realized very quickly that it was not a powerful enough machine for our yard. It simply bounced off the rocks still buried in the ground. We ended up renting a small backhoe just to put in those sprinklers.
The same thing happened when it came time to plant fruit trees. This time we needed deeper holes, and the rocks we came across were much bigger. These boulders necessitated a full size back hoe. I laugh when I think of the enormous holes we had to dig in order to plant our little fruit trees. We pulled boulder after boulder out of those holes, then finally were able to plant our trees and fill them back up.
Those boulders and rocks were piling up at the back of our property where we dumped them. Eventually we gave many of them away to friends and neighbors wanting to build rock retaining walls. But we still had enough big boulders to encircle a fire pit in our back yard. Those rocks have provided seating for fun evenings of friends and hot dogs and s'mores for many years.
Though we have given away so many rocks there are still plenty of them in the back of our lot for the children to play with. They move the smaller ones around and build forts and rooms and play all kinds of great imagination games back there. I found a book at the library when my oldest children were small, called, Roxaboxen. (by Alice McLerran) It tells of some children who made a fantastic place to play and let their imaginations run wild out of a plain old rocky hill. They called their imaginary land, Roxaboxen. The boys and I started calling their rocky area of the backyard, Roxaboxen. They loved to play back there, and the rest of the children to come have all loved it too.
This week David and Sophia, our two youngest, have been enjoying Roxaboxen, and have been creating their own fort out there with rocks and wood and whatever else they can find. I love watching them have so much fun together out in the fresh air, running and building, and doing all those things that kids are just made to do. Not too long ago I checked out the book, Roxaboxen, from the library again, so I could refresh my children on why we call their forts that strange name. Some of them could not even remember why anymore.
And so it seems that for our family, rocks have been a source of lots of fun, but they have also been a means of teaching our children the value of hard work. Our older children have reminded us many times over the years of how hard they worked to get our yard free of rocks so that we could put in a lawn and a swingset and a trampoline. Lest they think that the younger children are only reaping the benefits of their valiant efforts….let me tell you about the last month or so.
Our patio has been feeling its age. We've had some areas that have sunk, while others have raised, and we've had a small amount of water getting in our basement. We tore up the patio to repair the problem. We needed to grade and fill and compact the area and get it ready for new concrete. Our older boys still at home did plenty of lifting of pieces of concrete to load a dumpster so it could be carried away.
We were soon to realize that we had not come to the end of our Battle with the Boulders. We needed to dig out around our well, and dig a trench from the well to the house, in order to run conduit to ensure that we have proper well and water line access once the new patio is poured. And once again we ran into rocks…small ones at first, but eventually we came to massive boulders, right there within feet of our house. Jerry and the big boys first tried to break them up with a sledgehammer so they could be removed piece by piece. But this huge heavy tool just bounced right off of them, while the boulders just sat there laughing at them. Just like we did years ago, we concluded that a great big excavator would be necessary and were finally able to remove the rocks. (Anyone want any big boulders?….you can have them, but you have to do the transporting….the excavator goes back tomorrow) The huge ones were moved out of the way with the giant tractor, while the smaller ones had to be loaded into the huge bucket by hand to be hauled away from the work site.
It has been déjà vu to see my children, boys and girls, working out there, loading rocks, just like their big brothers did so many years ago. David relishes the work. He wakes up every morning and asks, "What are we doing for work today?" The other morning I couldn't even get him to eat his eggs before he was putting on his boots and dashing out the door to load rocks into the tractor bucket...sidenote...those rocks in the picture are the really really small ones
Jerry has used this project to teach our children all kinds of new skills, and to work hard and long. They've glued pvc pipe and conduit, they've driven tractors, they've dug holes, they've put in an underground gas line for a new gas fireplace, they've experienced "mistakes" when we broke a water pipe while digging, they've learned to use tools they'd never used before such as a laser level, and they've moved many many pounds of rocks. When our project is complete I feel certain that each of them will take great satisfaction is knowing all that they did to contribute to a beautiful backyard.
Here is a poem our family has memorized about the importance of doing things well.
Whether you are working or playing, always put your whole self into what you are doing, and do your very best.
Work while you work
Play while you play
Once things each time
That is the way.
All that you do
Do with your might
Things done by halves
Are not done right.
