EDMONDS — Up the street and around the block from where Diane Mooney lives is a yard with a very large rock deposited during the last Ice Age.
Whenever she passes by that glacial erratic, she wistfully thinks how much she’d like one of her own.
“How could one get a rock like that? You can’t unless it landed in your yard during the Ice Age,” she said.
Now one has landed in her yard. Well, sort of. Unloaded is more accurate.
Friday morning a city-hired contractor plopped a 15-ton boulder on her property in the old Seaview neighborhood. It was unearthed during a repaving project on 220th Street SW and 80th Avene W. The city decided it was less costly to give away than dispose of and Diane and Kevin Mooney couldn’t be happier to adopt it.
“I couldn’t believe my good luck. Doesn’t everybody want a rock like this?” she said of the geologic specimen that is around seven-feet long, six-feet wide and close to five-feet tall. “It’s even more fabulous than I could have imagined. It is a thing of beauty.”
Moving it to the Mooneys’ property will cost the city about $8,500, said Ed Sibrel, the city’s capital projects manager.
That’s cheaper than what the contractor would charge to haul it to their yard in Monroe where they would then try to blow it up into smaller pieces, he said. The contractor, Lakeside Industries, didn’t want to do that, he said.
The city announced the giveaway in a Facebook post crafted by Sibrel that generated 50,000 views and 50 requests.
There were 10 conditions a recipient had to meet. For example, they had to live in the city, and the boulder’s prospective showplace had to be on the homeowner’s property. The site had to be easily accessible to heavy equipment that would be used to deliver it.
Other conditions Sibrel put in his post: “You darned well better have the permission of your significant other” and “no give-backs.”
As Sibrel worked his way down the list, the Mooneys were the first to meet all the conditions. He scouted the property beforehand to make sure the rock could be brought there and unloaded safely.
Ironically, Mooney, an Edmonds native, attended Westgate Elementary on 220th Street SW and grew up near where workers discovered the rock.
Now, she, her husband and three children live in a home on a large corner lot on 186th Street SW. Figuring out where to put it was easy.
A pair of maple trees in her front yard died and had to be removed. She replaced them with blackberries that rapidly grew out of hand.
“I tried to Ninja my way through the blackberries and that didn’t work,” she said with a laugh as she described trying to cut down the thorny vines. “So it is going right on top of the blackberries. Then I will landscape around the rock.”
Only one neighbor is likely to be affected by the new landform, she said, “And they will be thrilled to have it covering the blackberries.”
Still undecided is whether the newest member of the family deserves a name.
“It is already called ‘Granite’, ” she said, referring to the moniker given it by the city. “I don’t know if I’m going to keep that.”
Jerry Cornfield: 360-352-8623; jcornfield@heraldnet.com.
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