Watching Erosion

Just standing there for a brief moment you can literally see pieces of the earth break loose and roll down the cut face of the slope at the top of my drive. It did not move much at all with the rain we had all summer. Now in the thawing cold, pieces of earth that have been lifted by ice fall when their support disappears and leaves them hanging in the air. It is much slower than a landslide, but certainly faster than slow motion. It's living erosion.














Definitely faster than watching bark grow.














Meanwhile anti-erosion forces have been busy placing chinking stones into the wider gaps in the face of the wall.

I may have gone just a bit cold stone crazy. Yesterday after the latest big freeze while placing small stones in the wall's face I swear I thought the wall had moved. Oh Lord! The wall was now hideous and I was ready to knock it down and start over. Good thing it was too cold to do that.

I scoured the dozens of pictures of the wall during construction and looked again this morning. No this wall has not budged an inch. It was just bad lighting. This wall is beautiful.














Yesterday I thought there was an 80% chance that this wall wasn't going any where any time soon even if it had settled just a bit. Today I have that up to 95%. It ain't goin' no where. I think it's a keeper.















The addition of all the smaller stones into the wall is giving it a much richer texture and hopefully a little additional support.














Part of this cold stone crazy is the much closer examination of the wall. On this cold wet muddy slope it was a bit hard to step back and look as it was being built. Plus the rain and snow and wind and warm and cold is washing all the dirt off the stones. There was more soil on many of them than I thought so the gaps were growing in some spots.

I am getting to know my wall.













On this next wall I need to spend more time with each stone and a good stiff brush. I'll also have a level patio floor to stand back and look from.














That remaining 5% of fear is from the unknowing of this cold force, this absence of quantity as some would have it. This soil was smooth and flat not so long ago and now it looks like it is going for a ride.

One nice thing about this cold is that it has been revealing lots of small stones that are good for chinking.