Harvesting Rocks

Today we went out to the countryside to pick rocks. For those of you who live in the city or in fully developed suburbs, you may be unaware that Wisconsin farm land is built on rocks. Gray rocks, brown rocks, pink rocks, black rocks...rocks that are quite a nuisance when you're trying to, say, till a field or dig a foundation for a new house, but as it turns out, rocks that are the perfect size and shape to use as natural edging for garden beds.

Mind you, this was not our first time picking rocks. We've done it twice before, at our friends Peter and Corie's house out in Erin. They had built a new house on previously undeveloped land and we caught them at the perfect time: Before their lawn was seeded. Out we went with shovels and a wheelbarrow, and we dug up enough rocks to edge three of our garden beds. Of course, we nearly killed the suspension on the Mister's car on the long drive back home, but it was worth it. Our garden beds never looked better.

The problem is, once three of your garden beds are fabulously edged, the rest of them with their generic interlocking brick edging look sad by comparison. At the office the other day, I was lamenting this very fact when my colleague Pat said, "You know, if you're looking for rocks, I've got some." "Really?" I replied, unable to conceal my glee (but trying very hard to remain dignified; after all, I'm the new girl at the office and don't want to come off as strange); "You mean, I can come out to your house and dig up some rocks?" Pat replied, "Oh, you don't even need to dig: They're all in a big pile next to a tree."

Hello, new best friend!

So today we headed north to Richfield, where, true to Pat's word, an abundance of rocks awaited us next to a tree in his back yard. Granted, there was some serious Box Elder overgrowth to be wrestled with, along with the requisite summertime complement of mosquitoes (I'd like to thank the makers of Deep Woods Off), plus a surprise bonus of some rusty barbed wire cutting through the middle of the rock pile, left over from when the property was a farmer's field. But oh, sweet rocks!

Having learned our lesson about the Mister's car's suspension not being terribly happy with the addition of a thousand pounds of rocks, we drove both our cars out to Richfield so we could distribute the load equally. Even so, both vehicles looked like they'd been tricked out as low riders, so bountiful was our harvest. I believe I could actually hear my fuel economy dropping on the drive home.

Here are the rocks we picked up today. I figure this is about half as many as we need to finish the remaining two garden beds. So, if anyone out there has any rocks, please pile them by a tree and we'll be by soon.