Peggy’s prompt—the pebble

Peggy’s prompt ---The pebble

I just bought three bags of river pebbles to refresh the ones that were here when I bought this house seven and a half years ago. The ones the previous owner had probably used to spruce up the house for sale—edging the one “empty” side of the house (the one that has very little landscaping—still). And in some other strategic places around the foundation where little else can be done to make it attractive. Seven plus years is a good amount of time to have used the same edging material, but in that time I’ve also developed the lack of ability (or rather, my Back has developed the inability) to do heavy yard work. And toting bags of river pebbles around is definitely heavy yard work. I prevailed on one of the outside employees at the garden store to load the pebbles into the back of my car, where they sat for several days before I sweet-talked my just-barely-middle-aged neighbor guy into moving them out of the car and piling them in front of the garage door. Next I plan to borrow the same neighbor’s wheelbarrow—assuming I’m strong enough to push it around loaded with pebbles—to get the pebbles to their final destinations. Well, at least their destinations in my yard. They still have a ways to go before they wind up as sand on some beach. But for now and the foreseeable future, they’ll be residing in my yard. If my wheelbarrow plan fails due to a complaining back (mine) I guess I’ll just have to scoop a few pebbles at a time into an empty kitty litter pail (of which I have several, as you can imagine) and walk around to the various spots in the yard for delivery. Shouldn’t take more than the rest of the summer (which hasn’t really arrived yet) at that rate. But I’m nothing if not persistent. How do you think I ever got a PhD? Perseverence and persistence. Plus I don’t like admitting that I can’t do something anymore that I used to do with ease, so consequently nowadays there’s quite a lot of the breaking the task down into tiny bits that can be done over and over. It’s like being two years old again, except my center of gravity is higher (and wider) and therein lies the problem. But I digress. By the end of the summer, my house should be neatly flanked by renewed strips of river pebbles, placed there slowly, but lovingly, by yours truly.