Building Our Garden pt. 1: The Rock

I've been meaning to share this story for a while, but with the wedding, job changes, and lack of internet, it's been tricky keeping up with things. 

Back in early July, as we were trying to dig out a plot for our raised bed, there was a large rock in the way. There weren't many other options for plot location, so this rock had to be removed. I tried digging it out one afternoon, barely making any progress. The rock just seemed to get bigger and bigger, so I left it for Kevin :)

 

The next day, he took a turn at removing it, but the rocky ground around it was making this challenging even for him. We borrowed a pick axe and a hand pick from our landlords and tried again, together this time.



Of course Kevin wears flip flops while using a pick axe...

Kevin had warned the landlords that there was a very good chance that he would break the pick axe handle. "If there's a wood handle, I always seem to break it." They laughed it off and lent us the tools anyway.
Soon after, Kevin broke the pick axe handle.
And then I broke the hand pick.

This rock was getting expensive.

Eventually we dug out enough around the edges of the rock to form a lip to grab on to. Kevin decided to loop a rope around the lip of the rock and then tie the ends to his car. And back up. The rope just slipped off. We dug a little more, tied the rope a little tighter, and tried again. It slipped off anticlimactically once again.  Kevin tried once more, digging a little deeper, tightening the loop and really revving that engine again before backing up for a third time.

Suddenly, before we could even comprehend what had happened, the rope snapped loudly and ricocheted off the rock and straight threw my healthiest tomato plant, full-on decapitating it at the base.

And the rock still hadn't moved.

With our rope ruined, my plant murdered, and no progress on moving the rock, Kevin agreed to give up and go inside for dinner, but not before yanking on the rock one last time with a bit of profanity.

It popped right out of the ground.

It took both of us and a two-by-four to wedge it out of the hole and roll it out of the way.

Kevin slowly rolled it to the campfire and claimed it as his throne.

 

King of the Rock



Proof of a hard day's labor.

The rock (boulder) was finally out of the way and we could officially move on to building our garden.

But not until after dinner.