Rocks

Some kids get grounded when they get in trouble. Mom usually struggled with remembering that we were grounded (that’s another story, though) so we got extra chores. During the non-snow months, it was quite often picking rocks out of the garden. The extent of our crime determined the number of rows we were sentenced to. We would go out with our empty ice cream buckets (sometimes 5-gallon buckets) and slowly work through the never-ending rows, pulling out every rock we could find and putting it in our buckets. When the bucket was full, we’d take it out to the drive way and pour them out over all the rocks already there. Then it was back to the garden. Lather, rinse, repeat until our assigned rows were done.

Now, it is interesting to me that no matter how often we did this, and certainly we de-rocked the garden multiple times every year, there were still always rocks out there. The logical part of my mind has been led to draw two possible conclusions from the evidence. 1) When Mom was really mad at us, she’d go gather up the rocks from the drive and return them to the garden or 2) Rocks really do grow and reproduce. A tiny pebble, if left alone, will eventually become a giant boulder. They must grow fast enough to go from unseeable grain of sand to a fist sized rock multiple times a year. But we didn’t have boulders out in our fields, so it must be a young growth spurt that tapers off for centuries. As to how they reproduce, I have no idea. I just report what I see.

Mom swears that she never, ever put the rocks back out into the garden, so if we are to trust her, it must be #2. When scientists prove this, I expect to get royalties.