Stones

There's no shortage of stones around here. 50% of our 'soil' is rock, 40% is clay and only 10% qualifies as soil. There are large decorative rocks everywhere in our garden, most of them dug out of the field above our house and carried down all those stairs featured the other day. Small gravel makes good fire resistant mulch. There are bigger ones available in the field for landscaping,  but we lack the machinery needed to transport them to level places in the garden. If we put them on the hill I'm afraid they might end up in our living room!  But they are not tiny so I looked inside for something small. I love rocks and have been picking up interesting ones for years. 

There are a lot of these geode-like rocks around our landscape.  The one featured today has been sitting on my bookshelf for years because it cracked open to reveal an inner core. I have no idea how this happened and I suspect there are a lot more of them around that just haven't cracked enough to reveal what's inside. I found the two smaller stones in a dry seasonal creek bed  in an area that was once open space but is now covered by a housing development. I kept them because I liked the  mini-geological markings and they remind me of one of the few open spaces where Ozzie and I could wander around without restrictions.

I have another collection of small, smooth pebbles that have a specific purpose. I like the Jewish tradition of leaving small stones when visiting  the gravestones of the departed. I have modified it somewhat by leaving them in front of photographs of my parents on the shelves of our library bookcases. One of them, a tiny nondescript black pebble has an interesting history. I did therapeutic yoga with a woman named Lisa for many years and we became friends. She was killed in a head-on collision on her way home from visiting her sister in Mendocino. Her sister held a memorial gathering in Lisa's beautiful garden. Lisa loved rocks and her small Berkeley garden was filled with them. There was a large bowl of pebbles by the gate, and when the gathering was over we were all invited to take one of them to remember her by. A lot of things got lost in the shuffle when we moved, but somehow the small black pebble survived the move, and I think of Lisa every time I see it on the bookshelf above my desk.