There is a place, not very far from us, where I have contributed to the soil certain “amendments.” These were all from our yard and were all basically dirt with a little bit of grass thrown in. Over the years we have removed more and more grass from our yard in order to add more and more bed space. I initially thought that less grass = less work (ie: no mowing.) It turns out that this is a zero-sum game since weeding doesn’t need to be done as often but takes hella longer to do. So I have not taken out any grass for a while.
But when I do, I set it free down by the river. More recently, some of the dirt from the flower beds was liberating itself, having been freed from the bondage of grass roots. I needed more retention in a form that would easily integrate with what was already there. So I went to the place to see if some of the rocks did not want to come to a new home where they could lie in the sun all day and never, ever be flooded. As it turns out, five or six did!
So I loaded them up for the trip home. That kind of work on my kind of back makes me feel a bit like Donald “Sully” Sullivan from Richard Russo’s Nobody’s Fool. Yes, it is a bad idea but it feels good while I’m doing it. The trick, once I them home, is to mix the new with the old without slipping a disk in the process. The reviews I have gotten so far are positive on both scores. I about some inexpensive dirt in plastic bags to put behind the new stack of rocks. There’s a small gap at the bottom of new status where the cheap dirt might try to liberate itself. I’ll have to do something about that.