Clouds are banking in from the west, bringing the first significant precipitation to Vermont in months. April’s weather has felt positively ‘Southern Californian.’ Under intense sunshine, in powder dry conditions, I got started laying stone on the Stone Eye Project this past week.

This is my first experience working with stone from Mitchell Quarry. The Waits River phyllite is a medium to high grade schist.The parallelepipeds (ET’s term for prism shaped stones with sixfaces,allparallelograms) took some getting used to, especially their propensity to shatter along the bed-plane lines when any hammer-trimming is attempted.

By taking it as it comes, I’ve made friends with the material and can now appreciate its strengths. The stone is generally flat-bedded; allowing for even, level coursing and broad, solid surfaces to build upon.

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