Pockets Full of Rocks

I've probably said this before, but it bears repeating... I love rocks.

From all reports, I always have loved rocks.  My mom tells a story about how my bus driver used to make me empty my pockets before she would let me on the bus, because I was always finding rocks at the bus stop and absconding with them.  

I have an old shoebox with all my favorite rocks from when I was a kid.  That sucker has traveled everywhere I've moved, much to several poor mover's laments I bet.  A lot of those have fossils, because where I grew up in Michigan was lousy with fossils and the landfill next to where I lived was constantly moving dirt, unearthing more of the treasures.

Now I'm here in the Ozarks where, I think, one of the ice ages stopped, dropping all the rocks it had pushed along the way.  Our property is covered in rocks.  

This, of course, makes digging for any reason a little difficult, but we deal with it.  There are also rocks pushing up through the lawn all the time, which makes mowing fun sometimes.  And gardening is always an interesting experience.  We pulled three wheelbarrows worth of rocks out of my front bed last month.

Nevertheless, I am in rockhound heaven here.  I wish I knew all the names for all the different kinds of rocks we have here.  All I know is one strikes my fancy for whatever reason, it goes in my pocket and comes into the house.  (Yes, I haven't changed in 45 years.)

I know I have petrified wood by the scads out there.  And quartzes of all sorts.  There's something called Mozarkite on the property.  I have a big one I'm currently using as a corner border for one of my gardens.  We also have a bunch of rocks with geodes in them, albeit not the huge fancy geodes - usually just a hole or a crack in the rock filled with tiny clear crystals.  

Yesterday, I found a rock that is super sparkly on its broken face.  The other parts are bland and uninspiring, but that one side is amazing.  It's sitting on my bathroom counter now where I left it after I washed it.  Every time I turn on the light, it makes me happy with it's sparkliness.  

I also found a rock in the roots of an overturned tree the other day that I finally brought inside and washed yesterday.  I'm not sure how to describe it.  It's like someone took a geode and flattened it out so the whole length of it is covered in sparkly bumps.  I really should take pictures, but photos never turn out the way I see the rocks.  Trust me, they're pretty amazing.  

One of my bookshelves has an assortment of rocks with a circular pattern in them.  (Lined up in front of the books... come on, I can't spare a whole shelf for just rocks.)  Another has various pretty smaller rocks I've found.  I have a crystal dish with all my super special rocks in it.  There's a chunk of smoky quartz I found on the TV stand.  There's a cool swirly patterned rock I'm using as a bookend in the spare room.  

Pretty soon, Hubs is going to start telling me to empty my pockets before I come in the house.  ;o)

I joke.  He's amazingly patient with me and my rocks.  He enjoys looking at them when I show them off, so that's a plus.  I'm forever going 'hey, look at this one' when we're out on the property.  More often than not, I show him a rock and then let it fall back to the ground.  But when they're really special, they go into my pocket.

Maybe someday I'll hit a geology show and find out if any of these super special rocks are worth something to anyone but me.  I could be sitting on a financial windfall.  LOL, or not.

What about you?  Are you a rockhound?  Or do you think I'm a little cuckoo?