Understanding stones

I love stones, I find them beautiful. Especially the very old stones that have been rounded by water. And they are here in abundance, and in many colors. I slowly move the most beautiful specimens from our field to the pond, a few every day. Our field becomes easier to work with, our pond edge more beautiful, and I enjoy the slow pace. A wonderfully quiet activity and without any hurry….I thought.

Our soil here consists of loam, we already knew that. Not surprising: all the old houses here are also made of loam, you can’t bake bricks from that. But on that loam lie countless stones. The strange thing is, however, that those stones are usually not on the surface, and are only visible on the freshly ploughed fields. As an ecologist I know that earthworms can ‘bury’ stones, but that takes a lot of time.

After a period of almost continuous frost I came across this, to me surprising, phenomenon: our soil ‘eats’ the stones. In the meantime the stones are 3-6 cm deep, in a few weeks. I have a hypothesis: the soil is frozen and hard, but stones conduct heat well, so when the sun shines it thaws under the stone, allowing the stone to sink into the soft loam. If my pond edge has to be finished this year I will have to hurry, soon all those beautiful stones will be gone. And will my pond edge disappear too? One of the most wonderful things about living in Hungary is the time and peace to think about such things.