Stop Rockin' the Boat!

One would imagine buying a boat to be somewhat easier than buying a house. I haven't found that to be true. We spent a good part of last Sunday trying out the boat we've already financed but not yet purchased. With checks in our pockets, we hoped to close the deal and pull it home Sunday afternoon. Unfortunately, things didn't quite go as planned. Dianne tells all about it on her Prodigal Daughter Returns blog. Maybe next week?

This week, I'm involved in some after-work landscaping in our backyard. As part of the design, I'm using fieldstone to rock around a small pond and associated flower bed. I broke over and bought a half-pallet of rocks from a local greenhouse at better than a hundred bucks, but I needed some larger ones for a waterfall into the pond. I couldv'e bought some for 20 bucks a piece, but I've never actually bought rocks before, so I figured I'd just pick some up somewhere. Once while driving around looking at bicycles, I had spotted a creek with easy road access near an upity Northern Virginia neighborhood. We went there Sunday after the unsucessful boat trial and started picking up a few rocks when a lady came shouting down the road. Paraphrased a bit, the conversation went something like this:

"What are you doing?"
"Getting rocks for landscaping."
"But we want to keep these rocks in the creek."
"Oh, why do you need them?"
"Because if too many people take rocks our house might fall in."
"Oh."

I didn't want to argue or make a fuss, even though I knew we were not on her property, or even close to her house for that matter. We just found another creek. I'll post pictures of the pond and waterfall when it's finished. -S