Digging Around

Rule of Holes: If you're in one, stop digging.


For some reason, I have a hard time following this rule.

I have been preparing a new flower bed over the past few days.

Digging, more digging, loosening the soil.

If you've ever worked in the garden tilling the soil,
I bet you've hit barriers as you push your shovel into the ground.

Sometimes you hit tree roots.

Most of the time, though, you hear that unmistakeable sound of
the metal shovel coming in contact with a rock.

When this happens (and it happens a lot in my yard)
I get a feeling of excitement and curiosity.

I move the shovel over a few inches and try again.

If I still hit rock, I repeat the process in an attempt to
figure out just how big the rock is.

It gets really exciting when I know it's just the tip of the iceberg!
I can't wait to uncover it and see exactly what it looks like!

When I finally find an edge to slip the shovel underneath it,
it's then that I start to feel the weight of the rock and guess how far it
might extend downward into the earth.

I ALWAYS need to get it out of the ground.
Even if it's pretty deep and probably wouldn't affect
the plants at all, I'm up for the challenge.

Most of the time, they are nothing but large pebbles.

But sometimes I've worked for hours to unearth a huge
boulder that almost breaks the shovel (and my back) as
I work to lift it out of the ground.

It's not just rocks in the garden that make me like this.

I can dig around on the internet for hours, unearthing
information on just about anything.

The internet is so much like my garden.

There are so many rocks to find!

 “The love of knowledge is a kind of madness.”
― C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet