Ooh, paving stones! Nice big paving stones.

Oh yeah. Hands down definitely will take New England rocks/boulders/granite ledges over clay soil any day of the week. If they're too big, can't be moved or used for edging, they become 'focal points' or 'features.'

Look at all those FREE rocks! lol New England stone walls and paving stones. Perfect!

Hahaha prairiemoon :)

Steve, those are some big rocks! You must be young and strong! If I encountered rocks like that, I would give up and put a path or a bird bath or bench over them. That's what I did with the 2 large oak stumps that I discovered when digging the front garden (ground down about 3-4 inches below the soil surface, so they weren't visible). Oak is so hard, they might as well have been rocks!

I'm not sure what is worse. The rocky soil in New England or the red clay soil in northern Alabama where I grew up. Both have to be amended to turn them into the rich soil that you see in midwestern states like Iowa. I could handle these rocks 12 years ago when I bought my property but it's getting harder and harder as the years go by. I'm always amazed when I'm digging and find one at how big some of them are. At first, I think I can dig them out and then I realize that I'm dealing with a huge boulder that I have to pull out with my truck. I don't see how farmers developed huge tracts of land before modern equipment was invented.

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Those are beautiful! Glad they're not in my yard, but I DO get sick of the cobbles we have here - not big enough to do anything with, just big enough to stop a shovel in mid strike.

I've dug up only about 6 or 8 rocks bigger than a loaf of bread, and that's in about 23 years of gardening on the same plot of land.

Insanely jealous about all those rocks! Here in exile, all we have is
clay soil, lots of it. . .and after wearing myself out amending it, I then
have to go to Vermont or the Hudson Valley to import all my rocks!

Yeah, those rocks are free, except for the cost of the Advil it takes to get me out of bed the next morning! Terrene, I am no Spring chicken. I'm retired.

Steve

You must be a strong, or at least a young-at-heart retiree, Steve, to dig these rocks by hand!

When we had our well dug two years ago, and they were loading the rocks their digging had uncovered onto a truck, I expected raised eyebrows when I charged outside to request that they leave a few boulders for a rock garden. Apparently my request is commonplace, because they weren't surprised at all, and they placed the "nuggets" as they called them as per my request.

I love our infinite supply of New England rocks, but wish they were easier to move!

Steve, you must be one of those hardy New Englanders that by some accounts are hard to find! LOL

We're in the process of re-foresting part of our cleared acreage now that our horse population is down to one (a small one, more like 1/2). While I love the shade and privacy, I am riddled with twinges of guilt everytime I plant a tree when I think of the monumental effort it took for the truly hardy original New Englanders to clear the land of trees and rocks with horses or oxen long ago.

Well done, Steve! My husband hates rocks sticking up to cause havoc with mowers but there's been a few he hasn't been able to remove. He'll make the hole deeper and roll them into it. When we had a foundation dug it appears we found the spot where rocks were dumped. And there was one huge rock that all they could do was roll it to a place in the yard that was out of the way.

I'd love some nice flat ones to make a walkway but those are rare around here.