A Rock, A River, A Repair

My husband and I were playing in the sandbox, otherwise known as landscaping here in the desert, and he kept pitching rocks over the cement block wall we just built between our house and the nasty dirt lot adjacent to ours. Then we planted a row of ficus trees and installed irrigation so we’d have a little privacy.

“Stop it,” I kept telling him as he continually threw pebbles and clods of dirt over that wall. “Our neighbors are going to see you.”

Sometimes Gary has to be reeled in. Instead of hauling our excess rocks to the the dump, he was pitching them over the wall one at a time, saving effort, work and money but violating every rule of neighborly decency in the process. Gary laughed and tossed another one over his shoulder, a tiny pebble no bigger than a marble.

And that’s when the geyser erupted, a beautiful fountain shooting into the blue sky, drenching us both.

If you had a big stack of rocks, really good aim, and a modicum of luck, you could probably hit a dime-sized sprinkler head if you kept at it all day. As it turns out though, you can also hit it by tossing a pebble over your shoulder. Who knew those things were so fragile?