There is a lot of excitement at the end of a day of walling. The sense of accomplishment is invigorating. Yesterday we completed over 50 feet of terrace using a lovely workable squarish sandstone in order to have students get some practice learning the principles of building dry stone retaining walls.
By contrast to what we taught the students, landscapers here in Canada often use Armour Stone to do terracing, using much bigger 'freezer sized' stones to hold back the soil. The word armour makes it sound like they are at war. When you see all the heavy equipment , the saws, drills, grinders and other powerful weapons, it does look like a bit of a battlefield.
Dry stone wallers are not at war. Many of us love what we do. The stones we use could well be called Amour stones. Oui?
This project is not quite completed, but at the end of the second day we were happy with what we had got done. Family and friends of the students dropped by to have a look and take pictures. We cleaned up the stones around the work area a bit and raised our hands for a celebration photo as is often the custom at the end of a DSWAC workshop.
