I love rocks and stones. Always have. When I was little there was a tree in our backyard that was ringed with stones. The tree was close to my dad’s garden, and every year when he would turn over the soil, he would deposit around the base of the tree the new crop of rocks that emerged in the dirt. I loved that area. There was a large flat stone that became my table for all sorts of adventures. Some days the area was my island. Other days it became my house. It would be a place to explore and look for hidden treasure. Perhaps a sparkly quarts rock? Some rocks became characters in a story. It was a fertile place to dream and play.

I still love rocks. They line my gardens and fill my paths. I am especially drawn to beach stones. I love the cool smooth surfaces and how they change colors when out of the water. Very rarely do I leave the beach without a stone (or shell) in my pocket. For a time I was collecting larger beach stones to edge my one garden. Needless to say, some individuals in my household were not happy to discover that the beach bag they carried to the beach was much heavier on the trip home.

I’ve been thinking about the rocks that “grow” in our gardens. It was always a mystery to me how the same tilled patch of garden could form new rocks seemingly overnight. Of course, my ever logical son had to burst my magical thinking of reappearing rocks: “The earth shifts and moves and causes the rocks to move upward,” he said.

“The science behind the phenomenon comes from the fact that rocks are better conductors of heat than soil. As a result, as winter sets in, the rocks take heat away from the warmer soil underneath. The soil beneath the rock, now colder, freezes before the soil above and, since it contains water and water expands as it freezes, the soil does too, pushing the rock upwards through the unfrozen soil above. In the spring, at snow melt, the space under the rock fills with soil, supporting it. And so it moves upwards, year after year, until it pops up in your garden.” (*https://laidbackgardener.blog/2019/04/09/a-spring-harvest-of-rocks/)

Well shucks, I rather liked thinking that rocks were animated and moved on their own accord. Alas, while my son talked about them shifting and moving, I started thinking about rocks and life. Seems as if there is a lesson to be learned from our garden stones.

Turning over the same soil each year and finding more rocks can be quite annoying. Yet, in a field or garden patch the rocks need to be removed before they cause problems. Rocks can prevent the seed from growing. An undetected rock can break a plow or other garden tools as well as the undulated ground from the rocks can cause the gardener, farmer, or animals to stumble.

As problematic that the rocks may be, it is those same rocks that become the beautiful stone fences for the New England farmers. Many of those walls are still standing even after centuries of wind and weather. Think of all the life that lives in those walls- reptiles, mice, “volunteer” weeds and plants that fall in the cracks.

Even if we till the same patch of ground and think that it is free of stones, there is always something being pushed to the surface. In life, there is always something that is displaced or moved or needing to be moved. Sometimes things seem to pop to the surface: emotionally-an attitude, prejudice, pre-conceived notion or spiritually- doubt, trust, or faith. We wonder where did they come from? We might think that we took care of that issue and that we already removed that rock only to have one similar resurface again.

Things shift and move in our physical world too- health, weight, housing, relationships, cash flow, even jobs. The question becomes, can we use that changing item, that pebble, rock, or boulder in our life for something good, beautiful or useful? The thing with tilled soil- it is a lot easier to remove rocks from its beds, than soil that has never been turned over.

So when we see the emotional, spiritual or physical stone, do we recognize it for what it is and quickly remove it? Could that pre-conceived notion be removed and placed with other thoughts to keep out negativity? Or could trust and faith in someone or Someone, be placed as the foundation for the perimeters of our life?

What about you? What, if anything, in your life has appeared as a stumbling block? What happened to it? Did it get tossed on a pile of other similar stones? Did it get used for building something productive?