A few rocks I've found around the place that don't belong here Granite from road works, this could have come from Cornwall, or maybe Scotland. This comprises of Quartz, Mica and Feldspar. The larger quartz crystal in the middle is called a pegmatite. It's just cooled down over a longer period so it had time to form a bigger crystal. The pinker lump has got more feldspar than the others. Slate from the garden centre This is a metamorphosed mudstone formed during mountain building movements. It splits at 90 degrees to the old bedding planes and is used for roofing a lot. It comes in a few different shades and this one (blue/gray) probably comes from the quarry in Blaenau Ffestiniog in Wales where I used to work as a monumental mason in the 1990's. Larvikite. Used as a costal defence at one of our local beaches.
This is from round here, part of a girt fossil shell that was washed out of the chalk at the beach (It's on a 6 inch floorboard) Although it's Calcium Carbonate like the chalk it's harder and more resistant to erosion. When I used to keep Giant African Land Snails I gave them a girt lump of chalk. They used to eat it to form their shells. They'd eat the chalk away but leave fossils like this one.
Very interesting Ziggy. Reminds me what stories rocks have to tell about our generations of history long ago. Some of my fav stories are the centuries old cave with spectacular caverns carved by water tunnels with spectacular Stalagmites are deposited on the cave floor and grow upward by dripping water. The shape of the stalagmite is based mostly on the rate the water is dripping and from how many points on the ceiling the water drips. Then another treat to marvel at the beauty of formations hundreds of thousands of years old of sandstone hundreds of feet high and wide created over hundreds of years from wind and water in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. I have also explored many mines thruout this country which has gifted me with many souvenirs and memories. Knowing the ancient history of each mine from the gold rush of California to the silver and turquoise mines in Nevada & thru the caves of glaciers and volcanos in Oregon & WASHINGTON. There are several huge rocks in the garden are on display . Some rocks I’ve dragged across the country just knowing that a particular 500 pound rock was unearthed by my father from a silver mine in Nevada which was under sea before the earth came to life looking much like a coral of some sort preserved in the earth until it was found deep in the earth in a silver mine of all places. Which is now covered in a thick layer of moss, by summer the moss will disappear.
