- The Girls and The Rock
While I was dead-heading daisies yesterday afternoon, I became aware of a lot of clucking and chicken-futzing in another part of the garden. When I went to investigate, I found ‘the girls’ gathered around a rather large rock – a rock heretofore unknown to me. I couldn’t imagine where it had come from. I consulted with the Head Gardener (that would be Nyel) and he was as flummoxed as I.
Out of curiosity, we weighed it. Thirty-one pounds! It’s a cinch that the chickens were not responsible for introducing it into the flower bed. And it wasn’t a little kid’s prank. Someone had to go to a fair amount of effort to place that rock amongst the rhododendrons. And where did it come from? It isn’t as though we have a lot of rocks in our garden. In fact, we don’t have any that I know of.
Like most old houses, ours is rife with unexplained phenomena. When strange things happen inside – doors that open or close by themselves, disappearing socks or other bits of clothing, strange thumps in the night – we blame our resident ghost, Mrs. Crouch. But, up to now, we’ve never known her to busy herself outside. She’s an indoors sort of ghost.
We did have a lot of people and wedding excitement in our garden last weekend. An empty bottle or stray fork would be explainable, but the clean-up crew left things exactly as they were before the festivities. And why would they have needed a thirty-one pound rock anyway? Of necessity, we are chalking it up to another one of those “little mysteries of life.”
That is so strange! The chickens seem as puzzled as you!
Sydney: Perhaps the rock has been hiding behind the “rhodies” for several or more weeks, just waiting to be discovered. Remember the last name of recent visitors who reached O’Ville via the “road” to Grandpa’s Village? The “girls” were in on the secret placement! TeeHee
Oh my! Way too cryptic a message for me. I guess you are saying that the Stone family lugged the rock to the flower bed with chickens watching? But why? And from where?
A rock hen egg perhaps?
I’m referring to the Plymouth Rock chicken breed. Seriously, is the rock sandstone, limestone or some variant of igneous? Is someone in the neighborhood missing a border rock along a pathway? It has the look of a Belgian ballast rock but a tad bit too light in color. Is there a divot nearby to indicate the rock was thrown into the yard or was it just placed there. The latter would certainly be what Mrs. Crouch would do. I’m sure she doesn’t throw stones.
Having grown-up elsewhere, I think most people don’t realize how rare rocks are in this part of the peninsula. Rare as, well… hens teeth! That’s a nice rock, and someone brought it here. Since the rock has been faced, I’d bet that it was used in construction somehow. A wall, chimney, or such. Perhaps it was dislodged by some event recently. Just how much powder is used in that howitzer anyway?
Regarding strange phenomenon within the house, in our family we refer to this as “time independent differential quantum tunneling”. Although a much more unwieldy phrase than “Mrs. Crouch”, it has the advantage of sounding scientific enough that most people will hear it, get a blank look and accept it as proven fact.
Cheers!