Picking stones

For long winded reasons, our entire garden was dug up. We had a guy in a digger doing a job. He levelled the garden afterwards and was gone. I then used a hired rotavator machine to loosen up the topsoil and rake the garden level. The result was a huge amount of small-stones/crushed-stone/pea-gravel all over the garden. Those stones were previously part of a now revised drainage system. We are talking about enormous amounts of stones. Perhaps a couple of hundred wheelbarrow loads. Collecting them all and levelling the top-soil manually was a huge undertaking that would take several days.

Some days into it, my brother and his girlfriend came to help for a day. Emma spent an entire day collecting stones with us. The work was enjoyable but it was demanding, energy zapping and murder on backs, hips and knees.

This was our garden. Our family home. Susan didn’t collect a single stone ( #lack-of-empathy #magical-thinking ) .

At one point she reluctantly went to the takeaway to get food for us. When she arrived with it, we were short one burger. No biggy. Oh wait, it was, it was considered a treacherous betrayal and had to be dealt with amid a huge fuss ( #narcissistic-rage #narcissistic-injury ) . Meanwhile the rest of us continued to collect bucket after bucket of stone from the garden.

Where did we put the stone you ask? After much considered thought long before the guy with the digger even arrived, we stacked the stone as part of a raised mound along the end of the garden. I still maintain this was a good thing to do for many reasons. Despite this and not having any input herself, Susan regularly delivers hatred over this ( #devaluation #vitriol ) .

Our family home. Dysfunctional. Sadness. Abusive. Bonkers. Daft. Immature. Or is it just plain manipulation and control.