Ramblings
A Yard Stone
Much like Cyd, our concrete denizen of the back yard, we have a river rock (from a stream actually) of which I've been wanting to tell the story. It's no Pulitzer candidate, but it's a bit of a precious story at 173. Let's get into it!
Pre-Rock
If you've been following House 173 for any amount of time at all, you're probably familiar with the beginnings of the house since we purchased it back in 1997. When we purchased it, the property was pretty bare, which in itself is a nice esthetic, but we had different dreams for it.
If you'll indulge me, I thought I'd pen a simple ode to our yard stone... just playin' around.
A Yard StoneA quiet stone, a weathered gray,Lies in the grass, come what may.A silent witness to sun and rain,It marks the spot, again and again.A simple shape, a grounding hold,A story in the yard unfolds. - GB Shaw (me)
As you can tell in the pictures above and below, 173 had a chain link fence for the first couple of years we were here. There have been many posts written about the backyard and the rest of the yards here at 173 so I won't get into the details here. But the important thing to notice is that there is nothing on either side of the fence that you're looking at in these pictures. That'll soon change.
Then, We Got a Rock
It was one of those bright, easygoing weekends when you do something a little out of the ordinary. We'd visited an old Army buddy, and on the way home we made a spur of the moment decision to grab a rock for the yard at 173 out of some stream running parallel to ol' Route 8 south of Otis, Massachusetts.
That stretch of the stream, running a couple miles, was a motherload of beautiful rocks. It’s the kind of spot you don’t find unless you get off the highways and travel the old routes. And the spot where we chose the rock was as bucolic as they come - shallow water, lots of trees overhead, and plenty of good, solid rocks.
Somehow we spotted the one almost immediately — a large, weathered stone, worn smooth from years in the water. It wasn’t perfect, which was exactly why we liked it. It had a good shape, like it had a story. My apologies for the blurriness of the next picture but It was taken with an old Instamatic back around 2001, at the edge of the stream...
Freeing it from the streambed took just a little doing. It was heavier than I thought, of course, and part-buried in the mud. I rocked it back and forth until it gave way. Once loose, I muscled it up and carried it up the bit of bank back to the car. Getting it into the car was a bear. With a bit of grunting, maybe even a little cussing, I hoisted the rock into the Jetta's cavernous trunk. Not exactly graceful, but it got the job done. When it finally landed in the trunk with a solid thunk, I had to laugh. It felt like loading a stubborn piece of the earth itself.
Back at the house, unloading it was a bit awkward. I reached into the trunk, took a deep breath, and with all the strength I could muster, lifted it up to my waist. As quick as I could I walked it over to the backyard fence, and dropped it. We stood there for a moment, just taking it in. We decided there and then that this would be it's home...forever! It looked like it belonged there — like it had always been part of the place, and I was never going to pick that rock up again!
A New Fence
That picture above was a shot from outside the back yard. The lilacs were rather newly planted, and we still had blueberry bushes on the other side of the fence. When I replaced the fence, I put the new fence about four feet closer to the sidewalk, which is actually city property, but almost 25 years later it's still there! This picture is from when the fence was brand spanking new. It was still orange from the stain, awaiting the passage of time to darken.
Now, all the plants and bushes are inside the fence.
And the yard has matured around that simple rock, while Charlie is the third beagle the rock has known.
Sometimes it collects kindred stones...
Stands sentinel guard to the entrance of the fun little "tunnel" created by the lilacs and other bushes... one of my favorite features of the back yard! The rock lies at the bottom left of the picture.
And creates this beautiful vignette inside the tunnel!
What "All" Did the Rock Start?
Well when I started this, I overshot by calling it the rock that started it all. In reality, it didn't start anything... nothing like Plymouth Rock anyway.
That simple rock, although not much to look at at first, felt steady, familiar, like an old friend waiting to be noticed. And now it stands among the flowers and grasses, a quiet little monument to that soft, lucky day — a reminder that sometimes the most ordinary things hold the deepest kind of meaning.
It’s funny how something as simple as a rock can make a yard feel a little more like home.
Now, every time I pass by it, I’m reminded of that quiet afternoon by the creek, and the satisfaction of bringing back a small piece of the world to keep.
