From the Big House

Recently here at the Big House the arrival of three BIG rocks has made quite a stir, especially among the residents of the Mental Health Unit (MHU). It was part of their territory where the rocks landed. The residents of MHU kinda-sorta maintain three gardens. Three triangle shaped structures with a 12 inch wall around them they are about 25 by 100 foot. Two of them have trees, bushes and weeds in them. The other is what i guess you would call a multipurpose triangle.

For years it had only weeds in it then they scraped it clean, put some black cloth down, then covered it with pine bark. Then last year they took that out and scraped it again, put more black cloth on the ground. Then the Rocks showed up one morning. The residents of MHU were really anxious about the recent arrival of the rocks and were worried about how to take care of them. How do you care for a rock? Will they need water? Especially rocks that are 6 feet tall and that wide also. And what was going to cover the ugly black cloth now. Someone said gravel. Gravel where are we going to get gravel? Then someone came up with the idea that they were going to be given big hammers and make gravel out of the big rocks.

Then one morning there was three big piles of sand  in the garden with the rocks. This sent them on another tangent of questions. Then some Maintenance workers showed up with shovels and began to spread the sand out. This relieved the stress about making gravel as no one wanted to have that detail. The residents of MHU are no longer allowed real tools. When they first started the project, psychology bought several sets of new tools. Hoes, shovels. Clippers, nippers and assorted other garden tools. But when some of the staff seen 20 mentally ill inmates turned loose on the compound with the tools they became nervous and decided that was not a good idea. They had even built this real nice metal cage to secure them when they were not in use. They are still in there today years later.

Now the rumor is that it is a Zen Garden and the question is… What is a Zen garden? What do you do to keep up a Zen garden? Will the rocks grow? I have done some investigating and found (from inmate clerks) that the rocks cost 999 dollars, that means 333 dollars each and the sand was 1,100 dollars and the tool project was 1,200 dollars. So far psychology has spent 3,299 dollars on the entire project. There is four Psychologists, who are planted in front of their computers all day. I asked once what they do on them and got this dejected look, “We have to log everything we do on here and even the stuff we don’t do has to be logged.” Well that explained it especially the latter part. I mean, if you have to log when you do nothing, well that would be a full time job for several of them.

If there is any father developments on the Zen Garden you will be the first to know. For now I am gone.

Peace Cowboy