Rock on
The first thing I planted in my garden was a rock. Transplanted, actually. A three-foot diameter river rock unearthed when they dug the foundation of our house. My husband was going to dig a hole somewhere else, and bury it. (I think he just likes to play with backhoes.)
“What are you thinking?” I cried. “Put it over there, and I’ll start a garden!”
He looked at me like maybe I’d been in the sun too long. Or like maybe I had cracked under the pressure of the two of us trying to build a house while raising three children.
(Yes, only three children at the time. The youngest came after we finished sheet-rocking. No inuendo intended.)
But he fired up the backhoe and hauled it far enough from the house to be out of the way during construction. It looked like a huge dinosaur egg sitting alone and abandoned at the edge of our yard.
When our youngest was big enough to pull a red wagon, the kids and I started the garden. We hauled in dirt to mound around the rock (without a backhoe). We planted an aspen on one side and a blue spruce on the other. We spread a weed barrier, of course. But not mulch. Remember the wind I’ve talked about? Right. So, we weighted that weed barrier down with wagonload after wagonload of fist-sized river rock.
When we finished, we dubbed the boulder and its two trees “the rock garden.” To be honest, I wasn’t sure the trees would even grow out here with all this wind. Our rock garden might never be more than a big dinosaur egg crouched in the middle of a mound of river rocks.
But that boulder sheltered the trees from the wind just enough. It anchored the soil, and provided shade for the aspen. Until finally, the trees’ roots sank deep enough to hold firm against the whipping of the wind.
Over the years, we extended the garden all along the west side of the yard. The old boulder sat in the corner, like a proud parent now, watching as the garden grew. We brought in more rocks to add structure and stability, and I carefully chose native, drought-tolerant shrubs, trees and perennials. Aspens, currant bushes, wild roses, columbine.
I was surprised to walk out one morning and find a purple penstemon blooming there. I had not planted it! Before long, other things I had not planted were sprouting and blooming in a totally (forgive me for this) organic way. Things I had not planted. Things I had not planned for. Lupines, a sunflower, currants. The columbine and wild roses spread. That lone aspen multiplied into a grove where leaves whisper in the breeze, and the grass is cool and green. Now, I sit in their shade smelling the freshness of the pine and watch the sun set over the mountains.
The spruce and aspen tower thirty feet above the stone, now, their branches intertwined above it. The rock looks small and insignificant in their shade. But that stone holds an almost mystical symbolism for me. It’s my foundation stone, from which sprang the creation of the oasis that is my garden.
It’s a reminder that a beginning doesn’t have to be something grand and showy. I don’t have to know how it’s going to turn out in order to start. I just have to use what I have, recognize opportunities, and be ready to do a lot of heavy lifting.
And me going forward with my own dream, offering a place for other ideas to take root, to be sheltered and nourished and tended, might yield more than I could ever imagine.
What if you do, too? I wonder what would grow there.
