Life in the Land of Megaliths - or Brains, Brawn, and the Use of the Lever

It seems, ever since I made my home in Brittany, the land of megaliths, that I've been moving big stones.

I'm back home for a short vacation. A few weeks back a section of the stone wall around the garden fell into the driveway. My neighbors were kind enough to move the offending stones to one side. But then a few days before my arrival for vacation a storm passed through and another section of stones fell.

So I'm spending part of my vacation ... moving big stones...

Here's the mess that greeted me when I arrived.

I cleared out some of the ivy and all the dry blackberry vines. Then moved most of the stones out of the way so I could begin reconstructing the wall. But there was one stone I couldn't handle, a monster I estimate at 500 pounds.

Here you can see the offending stone, the big one in the center. At this point I gave up. I was really frustrated to be able to handle all but ONE stone. I was considering contacting a mason with power equipment and making an appointment for them to come out, probably months from now, to move the one stone.

Anyhow, I gave up for the day and forgot about it. Then the next morning, feeling fresh and reinvigorated, I realized it was nothing I couldn't handle with brains, brawn and the use of a lever.

I found a piece of scrap lumber and used it to lever the stone, propping it up with smaller stones, until I got it tilted and raised up to the level where I could nudge it back into the right location.

That's done now. Tomorrow I'll wrap up the remaining work and update this blog post.
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Okay, it's done, at least, for now. Today I got the main pieces back in place. When I come back out again, hopefully in July, I should be able to tie up the loose ends. Eventually the sections of wall on either side will have to be rebuilt too. But they look stable enough for now.