Silas and I spent most of Sunday moving boulders around.

                    

In case you're wondering how many of these rocks were already in my yard - the answer is "none of 'em". They were all lined up along the road; we moved them to the point where they would roll down into the yard, and then moved them into place.

If you're wondering "how did you move such large rocks?" the answer is "very slowly". Initially, up oh the hill by the road, we would move the boulders inch by inch nearer to the slope, until we could get them to roll down; then we would have to actually lift the boulders on one corner (inch by inch, putting brake rocks to hold them up so that we don't lose any vertical) until we could get it to roll over onto the other side.

And then do it again. And again.

We proved that Archimedes was correct - given a long enough lever and a place to stand, you can move anything. He forgot to mention that you have to have a fulcrum. That's kind of a problem, when you have to keep moving the fulcrum in deep sand in order to get the lever to a different load point on the boulder.

And when you'd doing this in full desert sunlight, it seems like it takes forever.

I explained to Silas that this was just like when my ancestors built Stonehenge. Silas allowed as to how those weren't our ancestors. 

I said, "Son, are we out here in the hot sun, moving huge boulders into arcane configurations for no discernible reason?"
"Yes, we are."
"Then, OBVIOUSLY our ancestors built Stonehenge. This kind of stupidity can only be genetic."

It was necessary for me to straighten him out; Silas knew that we were Cherokee-French-Jew-asian-african-Inuit-East Indian in extraction, but he wasn't aware that we were Cherokee-French-Jew-asian-african-Inuit-East Indian-Celtic Druid. It's an understandable lapse in his ethno-cultural identification, and I'm glad that we had this occasion to get that cleared up.

We set two of the boulders on either side of the sidewalk; we called these "Thor's Twins". Silas wanted to know - was that a reference to the two undersea monoliths at the mouth of the Atlantic canyon in "Hunt For Red October" - what they called "Red Route One"?

I said, "No, they are "Thor's Twins" becauth, onth you get them into pothition, your whole body is thore".

               

There was one boulder, however, that - once we got it to roll down the hill - we didn't attempt to reposition it. Big Daddy is about four feet long by three feet wide by three feet high - plus some; at 166 pounds/cubic foot, that's something around 6000 pounds of rock. (that pry bar laying beside it is six feet long, and you are seeing the boulder from the end on).

That's not a boulder. That's an asteroid.

             

When we finally got it to roll down the hill, we were exhausted; when we saw it rolling towards the house, we were terrified; when it stopped short of destroying the master suite, we were relieved. REALLY relieved.

Now we have some more smaller boulders to move, along with one that's even larger than Big Daddy (I'm gonna invite the neighbors over for that one - we'll call it a "rock'n'roll party". That's nothing but the truth. There's rocks, and they will roll) and then we'll need to get more dirt to bury the bases of the boulders to make it look like they've been there all along. (that's actually rather ironic, since the rocks WERE there before the builder levelled the lot to put the house in; so now we're going to all this work to put the darn things back where they were before).

Ethel still has to buy the trees, and we need to put in the irrigation and lighting systems, and then spread the gravel - then we'll be through with the landscaping. At least, with the first pass.

Then we start on the outdoor kitchen.