The Zen of Picking Rocks

With the daily news of natural and human perpetrated disasters, including almost hourly reports of assaults on democracy by our so-called president and his minions, I have been feeling quite overwhelmed. So I have turned to a more or less inward activity to ease my angst.

The cooler weather has allowed me the opportunity to work on my front yard landscaping some more. (I thought I had written a post about my front yard landscape back some months ago, but I can't find it, so perhaps it was on Facebook, now deleted.)

Well, long story short: when I started landscaping I discovered that underneath the river rocks and pecan shell mulch was landscape fabric. And underneath the fabric was a layer of river rock. And as river rock is not cheap, I decided to salvage all the river rock that was buried. And that involved removing (and saving) the mulch and picking out each stone by hand...tried using a screen, but I still had to separate the river rocks from the debris and other stones, so it was not a work saver.

Anyhow, removing mulch, fabric and picking rocks one square foot at a time has become my Zen meditation of sorts. Mindless activity or mindfulness, quiet and solitude, peaceful and relaxing, a useless activity in the scheme of the universe, a purposeless purpose with visible results.

I've been replacing old, torn landscape fabric with new, rearranging large rocks and making "islands" populated with plants. Notice Mom's Virgin Mary keeping watch from under the juniper. Very Zen-Catholic-Agnostic-Spiritual.