gifts

My little townlet, a woody corner of the city located along the White River, has a custom every fall to provide for one weekend, a large dumpster.

People take things to the dumpster that would not be taken by weekly garbage pick-ups.

Today, I rolled the old Snapper riding lawnmower that the previous owner of our house left us. For three years it provided good service, and had done so for her for many years. Now that I've cut my front yard up into a series of beds that have pierced the solid plane of a yard of grass, a riding lawnmower doesn't make much sense. I had trouble getting it started this spring, and if I knew more about gasoline engines and how to properly maintain and tune them up, I could have kept it going longer.

Instead we bought a new lawn mower, one that mulches leaves and grass. Hence my rolling the old mower to the dumpster located in a neighbor's drive.

It isn't unusual to see people peruse through what other neighbors discarded. Junk probably gets passed around over the year. I try to not pick up anything, because I don't need other people's trash. A snobbish attitude, I know.

But today I noticed blocks of rough limestone rock. For two years I've debated about buying rock for my garden. I want to raise several beds around my trees by about a foot or so for hostas and other semi-shady plants. These rocks were perfect.

One of my other neighbors had a 1930s outdoor fireplace/barbecue pit in their backyard. They tore it down and toted all these rocks to the dumpster.

I spent the afternoon, digging them out of the dumpster -- it is a large walk-in deal -- and piling them in stacks on the driveway. I must have gotten a pallet load of them.

It took me 5 trips in the car to get them to my yard around the corner from this site.

These rocks have taken a small journey today to the dumpster and then to my yard. Like Prometheus, we carried out a routine of moving them to one place and then another.

Free rocks. How sweet they looked and how happy I felt. It was a beautiful fall day. I had already mowed, and thus mulched, a lot of leaves that have already fallen since last Saturday. Free rocks. Who likes to pay a lot of money for stone? It makes sense if one is building a structure. But for flower beds? They're rocks, beautiful in their substance, but they are basic. This attitude of mine, of course, doesn't make sense. But it has kept me for two years from bellying up to the local stone shop counter and purchasing rocks that looked quite like these, rough hewn, battered.

So I was late for the chili-cook-off next door. Our chili was all eaten. It was Texas chili, with beef. No ginger or pasta were used in making it. Standards were upheld on behalf of Texas. But boy are my arms tired. Promethean work is hard.