My Garden, Part Two: The Boulder

       Before you can grow anything in a garden, you have to do a lot of prep work. First you need the land, then you need to clear the land, and then you plant, right? Maybe for some people!  I picked the rockiest piece of ground in a 30 mile radius to grow my vegetables in. Small stones and pebbles are easy enough to deal with, along with the grapefruit and cantaloupe size rocks. I can even handle picking up the watermelon size pieces that seem be just under the surface about every 3rd step I take when walking though the garden. The trouble seems to start when I hit the extra large rocks, which are not rocks at all, I like to think of them as boulders.

I suppose I could plant around these behemoths, and I did for one year, but on the second year I decided at least one of them had to go. I started to dig around the monster that lay about a foot beneath the soil in bottom right side of my garden with a shovel. As I cleared more and more dirt from on top and around the thing, I switched tools. I stuck the pitchfork into the ground and tried to pry the rock up. It did not move. More digging with the shovel. The second time I tried prying with the pitchfork I knew that I was under it! It moved, just about one centimeter, but it did move! I continued to stick the pitchfork in and pry, and the rock continued to move, ever so slightly. I grabbed the shovel in my free hand and jammed it into the space between the rock and the earth as I made space with the pitchfork, and then pushed with all of my might. I could see that this was not going to get me anywhere. The hole was too deep for me to move the rock out. I stopped for a minute, and came up with a plan. I grabbed 2 two by fours.

It's out!!

While lifting with the shovel and pitchfork, I jammed one of the two by fours into the space that was made. I now had a lever! using the first two by four, I levered the rock up a few inches, and jammed the second two by four into the new space. I was then able to slowly inch the rock to the edge of it's hole. Now it was time to push...and pull. I pulled and pushed on this rock with all of my strength I had completely given up on moving it out of my garden at the time, I just wanted it out of the hole! After one last push ( which I thought could have caused my eyes to pop out of my head) it finally rolled free of the hole. What an accomplishment! The boulder most definitely weighed over 200 pounds. It still sits on the edge of the garden. I like to tell people that I dug it out of the ground all by myself.

"the boulder" remains at the edge of the garden.