Mukilteo Musings

Glacial Remains

One of my favorite columnists for the Seattle Times is Ron Judd. He has a way of describing situations that crack me up. His last two articles have been devoted to the difficulties of landscaping around here. You see, a gigantic glacier dug this entire area out; this is why Puget Sound exists; and this is why our yards sometimes have ginormous (my daughter's word) granite boulders. Here is Ron Judd's take on the little gifts we find in our yards; he evidently is trying to remove what nature left us:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/ronjudd/2002074356_nwwjudd28.html

"I was standing a dozen yards away and perhaps 15 vertical feet above him, next to a rock the size of an elephant seal pregnant with triplets, but four times as heavy....

Blame it on the last ice age, which deposited billions of cubic yards of eventual angst across this land as the last glaciers retreated. Or, if you prefer, on your home's original contractor, who had the heavy equipment in your yard to haul said angst away, but chose to have an early lunch instead."

My response to him would be to relax and incorporate the little gems into the landscaping. At our old house, we had a rock the size of a refrigerator turned on its side. I planted flowers around it and a tree behind it. My kids would stand on it and pretend to be on top of the world. In this house, some large boulders also came with the purchase and I could not have been more thrilled because I knew I'd miss "the rock".