When Matthew and I lived in VT and were first married, Matthew had a great job as a stonemason. He absolutely loved that job because it kept him strong and was a lovely creative outlet for his artistic mind.
Unfortunately, in December of 2012 Matthew badly injured his back from the continued daily work of lifting the stones. He slipped two disks and crushed two vertebra and was off of work for three months to heal. After that, Matthew stopped doing stonework for years.
It wasn’t until we moved to NH that Matthew’s back was healed enough where he could start doing some more work with stone. At our first house in NH, Matthew built a small retaining wall that we had planned to make into a flower bed around the tree.
When we moved to our current house there were a multitude of stonewalls surrounding the property with additional stonework accents in the garden. Matthew knew right away that he wanted to rebuild the smaller stone walls and he also has big plans for the garden in the future.
When the previous owner made the flower bed above the septic system, they uncovered an original trough for the animals that used to live here. They ended up building it into the wall and we knew the trough had to stay when Matthew was recreating it.
Matthew ended up making the wall higher and then putting a step down in it when it wrapped around to the steps. My favorite part of the wall is the perfect curvature of it – not an easy thing to do with stone! He did such an amazing job that he even had neighbors asking him to do some work for them.
The next spring, which was 2020, Matthew worked on the stone wall that wrapped around the front flower beds. He was doing it during black fly season (it is rampant in NH) and that is why he was wearing a cowboy hat with a full mask, long sleeves and pants.
Matthew had to source the stone for this wall from the stone walls surrounding our house. This was pretty tricky because we needed a bunch of good corner pieces so that we could have the wall properly wrap around the bed.
As a tip, take the time to try to find the perfect rock and flip it every direction to have it sit the best way possible. The last resort should be to chip or chisel the rock to reshape it.
Once Matthew was finished the wall it perfectly blended into the slope of the lawn and encased the front beds beautifully. We planted some roses but they did not last the winter so we will have to purchase new ones. I’m trying to find bigger bushes so that we can have instant impact!
