With summer vacations ending, I enjoy browsing through my own photographs to reflect on any holiday times lucky enough to enjoy. One of my more serious projects involves significant property purchase in Saskatchewan, where I salvage out of chaotic remnants of abandonment buildings that now provide me three weeks of wonderful peace, quiet and tranquility surroundings and where I sleep 12 - 14 hours each night. I feel so rested when I return home.
Part of this project dwells on improving outer perimeter along four exterior walls of large building housing both garage, and art studio and sleeping accommodations where I pitch my very old but useful family's tent from days past. To improve the outer perimeter requires substantial hours of labor removing moss growing into exterior walls and where rainwater falls off sheet metal roof, to removing grass, digging out tools buried under grass and even one large tire requiring my farmer-friend to pull out with his tractor.
After all of this, my farmer-friend offers me gravel he tries to replace with better and heavier gravel so I am recipient of loads of gravel to spread out over landscape carpeting. And I must secure this landscaping to prevent elements from ripping out with heavy winds, rain, snow, or any such development, and so I decide large rocks great idea, and I also use large tree branches in decay but still useful and very pretty to adorn exterior.
This season on first Sunday after arriving Tuesday, I drive out to locate one rock wall, my friendly-farmer-friends built out of picking rocks, and even some try to purge, but I am invited to go on my own rock-picking journey. I have never picked rocks out of any field, and in past I try to find rocks out of ditches in front of acreage. Rock picking is nasty work and sometimes, in past, I remember brothers having to be hired out to pick rocks out of farmer's field before summer fallowing so machinery is saved from damage.
Picked three heavy rocks out of pile and plunged them downhill, and must put them in my trunk. I must say, next day I felt the physical stress, and my work boots stood up well too.
Did you do anything adventurous this summer; I enjoy hearing about others' challenges too. Thanks for reading.
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