Upon this Rock or that Rock or that other Rock

dogwood leaves turning red
Dogwood leaves turning a deep red for fall in Tennessee!

Last year when we bought our land I knew there would be challenges. There always are when building a home. I’ve helped a number of people over the last several years get homes built and I’ve seen all sorts of issues from the construction side of things. We are just at the very beginning of the home building process at this point. We don’t have a officially completed house plan yet but have a pretty good idea of what kind of home we’ll build. I’ve been thinking a lot about the building process as a whole and one of the things I’ve been considering the most is the significance of rock in the soil.

Is It Floating Rock?

On our property there are multiple visible large slabs of limestone rock. We knew the rocks were there when we bought the property. They are spaced out and appear to be completely separate floating rocks., but are they really? Could they be connected under a few inches of soil that I just can’t see? They could be. The only way to know is to excavate and we’re not quite at that point yet. Depending on whether we have a few floating rocks or a large slab of solid mountain changes how you would build the foundation for the house.

A few days ago I brought a shovel out to the land and dug around the large slabs of rock where I want to site the house. I could find several edges to the slabs of rock which makes me think these are probably floating rocks (with emphasis on probably). Floating rocks are removable and not attached to anything other than the soil immediately around them. They “float” on/in the soil like a boat floating on water. I also checked in between the rocks to see if they connected. I didn’t dig very deep but could only find soil within 12 inches. Obviously there could be more rock buried underneath the layers of soil.

If these are floating rocks (as I hope and suspect) they can be removed instead of jack hammered out. They could even become landscaping focal points. I have this idea of taking the large rocks and putting them together to form a large natural patio area. We will see if that’s a possibility eventually but to do something like this I need more than a shovel!

Sowing Some Wildflower Seeds

While on the land I made a couple of spots for wildflowers. They aren’t intended to be permanent beds but just a place to add some plant diversity to the property. I scraped and cleared the vegetation then sowed with a mix of seed I’ve collected over the years directly onto the soil. The seeds I collected included rudbeckia, echinacea, coreopsis, Blackberry Lily, basil, gaillardia and a few other types of seed. Some of the seeds dated back to 2010 and their viability certainly is in question but I figured putting the seed out there where it has a chance is better than keeping it in storage.

If they sprout and grow we’ll have a couple more spots of color next summer.

 

If you have built your own home I have a couple questions for you!

  • Did you run into rock during the home building process?
  • What kind of rock did you run into?
  • How did you work around rock issues?