GardenBanter.co.uk - View Single Post

17-09-2004, 05:55 PM

In article ,
(Lee) wrote:

When one comes to think of it, a diamond is just a rock, but when
cleaned, polished and mounted tastefully, it can be a thing of
beauty.. and a good conversation piece.
I don't have a big diamond, nor a toilet planter, but I do have, on my
coffee table, several pieces of petrified wood, which after 40 years
in the garden, I brought in fearing they would continue degrading in
the garden.

I suppose there are folks who think I am a little, shall we say
"excentric ???" , but that's Ok.. those who know me and know how much
I love the creations of Nature, accept them and do admit they are
interesting and a good "conversation Piece!"
Leo

I have rocks around here that I've had since I was ten years old. Until I
owned this house, it seemed like for one reason or another I was always
moving from one house or apartment to another, & my whole life I've been
lugging around big hunks of rocks that have been used as decorations, as
terrarium or aquarium decorations, as doorstops, & now as garden
ornaments.

And while you may well be eccentric, I don't think it could be from
keeping rocks in the garden or on the coffeetable. There is nothing more
natural than rocks all about the garden. A very few years ago I stopped at
a yard sale & though I didn't find any stuff in the sale items I wanted, I
off-handedly asked if the rocks piled up around a tree were for sale. The
guy said he hadn't given that any thought, but if I came back some other
day when he wasn't busy with a yard sale, he'd consider selling the rocks.

I came back a couple days later & knocked on the door. We walked around
his rock pile & he finally said he wanted a hundred dollars for the whole
pile. I gasped. He misunderstood my gasp & said, "That's a good price.
These were abandoned by one of my tenants, and he ran a rockhound
business. That piece of petrified wood right there is probably worth a
hundred dollars all by itself." I said I hadn't gasped because I thought
it expensive, but because I'd thought I'd only be able to afford a half
dozen rocks. I ended up getting two carloads, including a forty pound
chunk of jasper, lots of huge pieces of petrified wood, hunks of pink
quarts the size of your head, rough streaked marble....super cool rocks.

Some of the smaller specimens now sit all around the house as book-ends &
the like, or decorate potted plants & the porch, have been used in gift
arrangements of rocks-with-plants I've potted for friends' birthdays, some
flat ones made good stepping-stones, & the biggest pieces are all over the
garden in attractive display. That was the best deal I ever had on a pile
of rocks, & they're ever so much superior to garden statuary or anything
artificial.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com