Not so easy to build a stone wall. Shopping for stones, I was assured by Flo, the proprietress of Polowy's Stone Suppliers, Inc., my neighborhood stone venders, that it would not be difficult for me to build a classic stone wall--the kind that line the roadsides in New England--flat rocks miraculously resting atop each other for centuries. Good fences make good neighbors and all that. In my assorted fantasies of restoring the house, I've imagined myself hamering and painting, digging and planting, etc. I hadn't thought about building stone walls, but the truth is aside from massive cleaning efforts, a little weeding and lawn mowing, and a bit of labor intensive but not terribly successful scraping of layers of paint from the screened in porch floor, most of the work around here has been done by the pros. I did like the idea of building those walls--like a jigsaw puzzle they told me.
Once the stones were delivered, and John had pushed around enough dirt with his backhoe to start building, despite my misgivings about my wall building abilities, I put on my work gloves and joined him. In about two seconds I realized a stone wall, at least a short sloping wall like this, is really built by one person. And in this case the person wasn't going to be me.
No comments:
Post a Comment