Ode to drilling granite

Who doesn't like waking to the sound of a rock drill at 7 a.m.?

Developers are extending our road to build more houses, it's only 24 hours into the two-month drilling/blasting phase of road work and mama's getting cranky.

Nova Scotia is one huge rock. And not that flimsy limestone stuff either. This is igneous granite. The stuff of cooled magma. It can't be chipped away. It's gotta be blasted.

We were warned when we moved here that the road might be extended. We hoped we'd have a few years before that happened. No such luck.

The trees started to fall in early spring.

Then a man arrived to install seismographs and to videotape the interiors of our homes in the event of damage.

That should have told me something serious was afoot.

But I'm an optimist. I figured I had heard what blasting was all about when a house was built down the road last summer.

That, as it turns out, was vibratory foreplay.

The sirens began yesterday afternoon. Two of them. I ran to the window to see what was up. Nothing. Silence. And then, the explosion.

I can't tell you if it rattled anything in my house. I was too focused on trying to relocate my internal organs.

Since then, there's been non-stop noise. Drilling, rock removal. Whatever that machinery is.

The good news is that, although I miss seeing them, the deer are leaving my garden alone having moved away from the noise.

I wish I could do the same.

Colleen