Rock Collections

I have been an inveterate "rock hound" since childhood. From the moment I was gifted with my very first boxed rock collection, I've loved the feel and color and texture and story of stones of all sorts. My home, wherever it has been, through all my many travels and struggles, has always been "graced" with the presence of stones gathered from here and there.

Rocks, in their many forms and shapes and permutations, seem to have some sort of pull on my heart and my mind.

My first studies, at college, were in Geological Engineering -- until I came to the realization that I would forever be too much of a homebody for the gypsy life that Geology demands. Still, I love the curious bits and pieces that the Earth throws at my feet. They don't even have to be spectacularly beautiful, in the usual sense, to delight me. I have jars, and bowls, and baskets of them here and there. Have given loads of them away, over the years, have acquired others...

But then there is this odd, small, unique collection with which I have been gifted. For these particular stones, I am most amazingly grateful. Such a collection, I find, grows slowly. I suspect that Mother Earth gives these fellows up jealously --
















And why not? I've found them in the oddest places. Hiking in Montana. Digging in my backyard garden. One, given to me by a friend who figured that the poor fellow belonged with the other two...

Over the years, I've used them just as you might imagine any healthy, red-blooded female person with any sense would, and I suspect I'm not the first. I'd be using them still, but I live with a fellow who, left to His own devices scrubs potatoes with anti-bacterial soap!!! So they're relegated to decorative duty at present. Sigh. Ahhh well, they're durable little devils.

Nowadays, they share their realm with this irresistible stony bodypart companion --
How fabulous! If I had a million lifetimes to collect stones I'd have organs to construct who knows what sort of stone critter!


swan