Friends who follow me on Twitter (@alison_morton) have been hearing about my rock-raking in recent days. Let me explain. We live on top of a chalk cliff. The view is magnificent, but the soil is crap. That’s a bit harsh. The soil is fertile, fine, and the weeds grow as if on Viagra. But there was a maximum of 20cms (8 inches) in ‘best’ part of the garden. Mostly, it was about 12cm (5 inches).
So enter the rotavator…
We now have 30 cms (12 inches) to play with, but it’s full of chalk rocks (toes included at lower edge of photo for scale):
To get something like this, the rocks have to go.
Rock-raking is hard, monotonous work, but as the sun warms your back and a light breeze plays the leaves, your brain is free to wander off on plot points, characterisation, scenes.
Creating a garden from an open area of plain green is like writing a novel. Rock-raking is like editing and refining once you’ve got a surface to work with.
(To be continued)
I understand rock raking so much better now … it does look incredibly therapeutic, I must say.
Also does to calories what fire does to paraffin!
Ooooh I agree about the it being conducive to writing. I always say that working on our allotment is very brain cleansing and I get lots of writing done while digging and weeding.
Exactly so!
It struck me that there were so many parallels between gardening and writing. I got my garden plans out for the next stage and realised it was just like planning a novel, so I was moved to write the next post soon after. http://www.alison-morton.com/blog/2011/09/07/take-a-blank-sheet-of-garden/ 😉
What a good idea. I find the allotment helps me.
I’m sure it will. I think that’s the great attraction of gardening, even weeding; not only is it creative in itself, but it gives you blank-head time. And you lose a few calories.