Tonight, I began using a lariat as a heavy-duty tool for the garden.
People, easterners like me anyway, see lariats mostly in design motifs. They look fluffy and floaty, the kind of lasso you'd throw around a date for the Saturday square dance.
Actually, lariats are about as tough as steel cable and not much more bendable. They appear to be made of fiberglass, Kryptonite, and long painful hours. They are used to restrain steers and plunging horses; it's not needlework.
We bought a modern lariat in a Wyoming antiques store years ago. Some ranch hand was probably doubled over, laughing at the "tourists" who bought his worn-out gear.
But tonight that lariat finally went back to work, to help me drag a rock that's easily 150 pounds. I weigh more; but it's enough. I threw my back out right away. Gravity waits for no man. Now I'm wearing the brace. Which I like actually, it helps with my posture.
I can leverage big rocks out of the ground. But moving them is tough. My approach: wrap one end of something like jumper cables (now my lariat) around the formerly immovable object, wrap the other end around around my waist, and pull like a mule. I'm building a high-stepping path of boulders across the front lawn. I need big rocks.
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