My father pressed us all into service to pick rocks from the garden. My sisters and I were enchanted with everything about our new house in the suburbs after years of city living but my father had eyes only for the large patch of tilled earth in the corner of the backyard.
We moved in just after New Years in 1962, the middle of winter in northern New Jersey. We saw the garden when we looked at the house in the fall but by the time we moved in it was covered in snow. Everyone forgot about it except my father. He brought home books about gardens that he read all the rest of the winter. Scribbled papers littered the table by his chair, long lists of wished for seeds he planned to purchase in the spring.
He never had a garden in his life, city apartments all the way. But his mother talked about the big garden her family had in Italy and how much she missed being able to grow her own peppers, eggplants and tomatoes. These were at the top of every list my dad made.
Finally, the weather began to change. Silky hints of spring, a slightly warmer breeze, a smell of melted snow saturated earth, the palest tinge of green on branches, began to appear. That's when my dad announced his final choices for the garden.
Peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, naturally, zucchini, lettuce, green beans, spinach, onions and garlic were on the list. He asked if anyone else had any requests. My mom said if he would grow it she would cook it or can it or pickle it, but she had her eye on the rock garden and the rose bushes as her pet projects. My middle sister wanted carrots. My youngest sister wanted flowers, (she was only three). I picked pumpkins. I wanted a really big one for Halloween.
Then he told us we needed to prepare the garden by digging up the dirt and mixing in different things to help the new plants grow. We assembled, armed with metal rakes and hoes. My dad started things off by digging and turning the soil but soon realized that none of this was going to work unless we picked the small rocks out of the garden.
There we were, picking out rocks, by hand, so we would have more dirt than rocks. My sisters stuck it out for a little while but wandered off to find something, anything!, more interesting to do. But I was the oldest so it was my job to stay and help. I asked my dad why there were so many rocks! It was impossible. We were out there for the whole weekend since it was my uncle's turn to run the shop but didn't seem to make any progress. My dad couldn't tell me why there were so many rocks either.
During the week my dad had another stack of books he was going through. I thought they were more books on gardening. I stopped complaining about the work because I knew my dad was set on a vegetable garden, with flowers for my sister, no matter what. The whole backyard would have had to be one big rock for him to give that up so I resigned myself to more work. I knew I would be working on Saturday alone unless I could make my sisters help because it was my dad's turn to run the shop.
By the end of the day I was filthy and my fingers were sore from picking rocks. Since the earth wasn't as muddy I could actually see the rocks I was picking and started putting some aside because they were interesting shapes or colors. So many different rocks it soon became hard to reject any. By the end of the day I had almost two equal piles, rocks to keep and rocks to get rid of and I kept sneaking extra rocks into the keep pile. I gathered up my treasures and went in to wash up.
Sunday I went out with my dad to pick more rocks.
"You know," he said, "I've been looking into the story about these rocks. I don't know if you noticed but not only are there a lot of rocks, there are a lot of different rocks."
"I know," I told him. "I could tell yesterday because they weren't all muddy. I saved a whole bucketful."
"Well, you know, you have a bucketful of rocks from every foot of land between here and the North Pole," he said.
"What?"
"Well, a while back, about two million years ago, give or take a couple hundred thousand years, it was the start of the Great Ice Age. It was cold, cold, cold, much colder than it is now, as cold as it is at the North Pole right now, right here."
I gave him a look. My dad was a great kidder and I had been fooled before.
"No, seriously, I mean it. You can read the books for yourself later."
"Okay," I said, "but what does that have to do with all the rocks in the garden?"
"Well, during the Great Ice Age there were mountains of ice called glaciers that formed. They were so big and heavy they started to move carrying rocks and dirt with them. This whole area was covered in ice sheets and glaciers that had moved down from the north. Sometimes the weather would warm up a little and they would melt a bit and then it would turn colder and they would get larger. Finally, they all melted and left all the dirt and rocks behind. Our garden is full of these small rocks but some are really big. In fact, just a bit west of here is a famous boulder, very large, about 170 tons."
"A 170 tons?"
"Scout's honor," my dad said. "It's called Tripod Rock. Maybe we can go see it sometime."
We turned back to our work. It was still hard but I didn't mind it at all now. That was the last day we picked rocks that season although every spring we had to do it all over again. We picked a lot of rocks and vegetables and flowers in that garden.
We never did go see Tripod Rock, or at least not the whole family. I went many years later after my dad passed away. There were several tripod rocks, large boulders set on three smaller rocks, but I only went to see the one that is 170 tons. It was the only one that meant anything to me. I was lucky enough to have a few minutes to myself before the next group of hikers came through and thought about peppers, eggplants and tomatoes, grown in a glacier garden.