Doing Me In

I'm having trouble sitting still today, at least sitting still in the straight-backed chair at the dining room table, which is where I write these posts. Normally, I don't think about the discomfort - or the enforced posture enhancement - but today I'm the after.

After the yard work. Last Tuesday I actually sprained both my hamstrings (and did some serious back damage) when I weeded the parts of my front yard that were already planted (see last year's pictures) and then started in on the other part. Matted weeds needed the pick-mattock (seriously), regular weeds needed the flat shovel (skim and dump), and the two cut-to-the-ground bushes needed the pick-mattock, the shovel, and a prybar (and still didn't give it up). Digging up shrubs, especially unsuccessfully, can kill a Bunny. Or make her sit with a pillow at her back and an Advil infusion in her bloodstream for several days, leaving only her brain alive to huff and puff and try to blow somebody's house down (see my last post).

After rock hounding. Yep, I went Saturday, despite the lack of bending over I could do (didn't have to as much as I'd thought). I found out that a hunting trip in a quarry involved a) driving into a five-hundred-fifty-foot-deep hole (along the walls - don't look down, trust me), b) choosing whom to follow more carefully than I did (always scope out the most experienced hound - I, apparantly, have a knack for finding someone greener than I am), and c) lots and lots of incredibly theraputic hammer-and-chisel work. I had a blast ... er, an incredibly fun time. I found some prehnite (whitish-greenish), some stilbite (one nice crystal cluster - which forms inside the stone - I found when I harrumphed and heaved rock onto a pile that split the other open), some granite (beautiful slab, great color, too small for a countertop, darn it), and a few others I'm still trying to figure out. Best finds? Not mine - the old dog of the group found some datolite in what, to me, almost looked like a rectangular geode, and another newbie found something green with a streak of lavender that someone said (unseen) might be fluorite, but is probably (now that I looked on mindat.org) tourmaline. Tourmaline! Some girls have all the luck.

But I gotta show the pics. Not the yard - I'm actually going to rent a sod-cutter ("sod," ha!) this weekend to get the beds in shape, so pics later this year - but two of my favorite pieces.

See what I mean? Yes, tourmaline would have been faboo, but this is so very cool! These are the same piece - one in regular light, and the other under long-wave UV light. That's orange, some greenish, and some yellow. (Yeah, yeah, not a great photo, but you try this holding a flashlight in the left hand and the camera in the other!) And this one is great, too.

The red really comes through, doesn't it? I believe the first is calcite and the second is - okay, also calcite, but I'm still researching (baby steps, yes?). The fact that they fluoresce in different colors even though they're from the same mine says ... um, I don't know what it says. Yet.

After more yard work ... and a treasure. Acid Trip came over on Saturday to help with the yard. While I hammered at rocks, he stripped the front of the house (faster than I could), so that when I came home from the quarry I found a nice length of bed just aching for a few bags of compost. So what did I do? What any good (pained and pooped) Bunny would do - I grabbed my metal detector and started looking for a money shot.

And I found one - a nice, high-pitched ping told me there was a quarter at medium depth. Trip dug, I sifted, and we found it just where the magic wand said we would! We were greedy - uh, psyched! I scanned again, and the machine told me a bigger cache was a bit deeper. He dug and hit a rock, tried to find the edge. And again. And again. When the hole reached about two feet across we realized it wasn't a rock but a slab of concrete, tilted at about a 30-degree angle into the hole. Huge. He levered and pulled and strained until I swear I heard his back crack, but we couldn't get it out ("we," ha!). He gave into the pain. But I went back in yesterday before class, found the other edge, used a prybar and a "walking" technique I learned in my theater tech days to finally get the damned slab out of the hole (without ripping too many of the rest of my muscles). No more treasure, though - not even any "pings," except in my back.

Overall, though, it was a very good week, despite the twinges, aches, strains, lack of fist-making ability (and a strange craving for corn). The group's next trip is in May, to look for fossils. My next trip will be Wednesday, to look for diamonds ... at 25% off.

Hey, there're more rocks around here than the ones found in mines and quarries, you know.

And they don't require chisels.