All the rocks I’ve found thus far – and they have been most numerous – I’ve been able to remove. Many of them were clustered around and under the cherry tree roots. Or rather, I guess, the roots were snaking their way between and over the rocks. No wonder there are so many superficial roots here – their way downwards has been blocked. The more tangled the roots, the more rocks I can expect.

There have been several large ones, a few that I’ve barely been able to lift, but even those moved in the end. This one, though, is going to have to stay. It’s loose, it moves when I push at it, but there’s just no way to roll it out of there. If there was nothing around it, I’m reasonably sure I could roll it out of there. Build a bit of a ramp, maybe. But here… stuff is in the way. There are so many roots in front of it, and the house leaves me no room to manoeuvre behind it. Even the smaller roots here are as thick as my thumb, and in the foreground, barely visible, there’s an even thicker one that I definitely don’t want to damage.