Tuesday, December 2, 2008

If You Build It, They Will Come.



The temporary stone pile is pictured here. From a distance it looks like a stone wall. Up close its many holes can be seen. These stones were placed with no consideration of a tight fit. We needed a tidy storage pile for the raw materials for a proper wall. This carelessness illustrates one unexpected outcome of building stone walls. Many creatures find a home in stone walls. Some of them eat garden plants. Some of them sting. The slithery ones cause the lady of the garden to shriek loudly. These are all good reasons to build the wall with no spaces between the stones.







The fossil rock supporting the wasps' nest may never find a home in a wall. These rocks are visually interesting but they tend to crumble. If they are placed near the top of the wall, they can be replaced with little effort. Time will tell if this rock remains in the temporary pile or if it finds a home in a wall.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

They can be a nuisance, for sure, but aren't those structures amazing to look at? Talk about engineering!

Gail said...

Enterprising creatures aren't they! We have a simple dry stacked stone wall and the chipmunks have moved in...they are quite destructive. I am sorry we didn't have the stones mortared in the center!

tina said...

I can see the lady of the house shrieking. Not a good sight:) I'd much rather snakes over bees any day.

Anonymous said...

We fight those things every year. I wait till dark and spray.