That made me think of the piece we found near us in Benson Arizona.   We were out exploring and we came across this piece she called her pudding stone.   It is a nice and very solid conglomerate from the area.   The piece is 34 by 21 centimeters in size and is in our cactus garden.

As we hiked back out the wash I came across the piece of limestone that had cemented together as a conglomerate.  It was a pretty piece and one of our favorite "rocks" in out cactus garden.  The piece is 27x22 centimeters in size.  

It is 23 by 14 centimeters in size and sits in our cactus garden.

I have a few of those non mineral pieces lying in our cactus garden as well that are fun to see when out on our property.

One is a hematite variety turgite that keeps getting more and more colorful as it sits out in the weather.  The turgite seems to get brighter with moisture.  Another favorite is a volcanic bomb found in the Chiricahua Mountains.

Hope people have fun with the photos.

Back about ten years ago I was with my brother in law, looking for opal about a mile or so away from what is now the Apache Nitrogen Plant, formerly Apache Powder.  They used to make dynamite for all the local mines and other projects starting in about 1920.   One time in the 1950's, a tank of liquid nitro accidentally blew up.  It was something felt all over the valley, killed a few people and left a huge crater where the tank used to be.  I don't know just how much was in that tank but on the collecting trip I found a piece of shrapnel and my brother in law knew just what it was, he said he had found a few of the same kinds of pieces.   It was a piece of that nitro tank that had blown up and the piece ended up more than a mile away from the plant.

Kind of an interesting piece of history of the mining industry of SE Arizona.

 and so much more.  Yesterday I saw that a good number of the folded labels I use for giving the animal name for the various things had been knocked over and down onto lower shelves.   At first I thought it must have been wind that somehow got into the 1/4 inch space between the sliding doors.   We do get wind here but it was odd so many labels had been blown down.

I had to remove the glass on top of the case to allow easy access.   As I was straightening out the labels I saw a slight movement at the top corner in the case.  I immediately had a light go on in my mind and had to laugh.

The culprit was not wind at all but the giant crab spider that had somehow squeezed inbetween the sliding back doors and gotten into the case and this one is a male.  The leg spread is over 7cm, so quite a large spider but they are quite harmless and in the attempt to get out it had been running around inside the case and its size had been responsible for knocking down many labels.   I picked it up and took it outside and released it.

Well, mystery solved, now I know it was not wind but a big spider that had tried to rearrange my display cabinet.   They don't spin webs as much and I had no problem removing him.

Never thought a spider could cause this kind of problem.

Thanks for posting those, great things one can make from "junk".

There was a man in the town of Cochise, south of Willcox Arizona who was known for things he had put into his walls around his property.

He invited my wife and I down to see his agates about 20 or more years ago.  Sure enough, the place was really cool.  He put slabs of agate, jasper and many other minerals into the cement of his walls.  He also made bit cement paving stones, about 5 of more feet across.  Those were also decorated with slabs on the top side.  Think he made various sizes of those paving stones. 

The interesting thing was that many of the slabs were not ordinary stone but a number were very good cutting material.  

Never did go back and have no idea what happened to his place. He was already quite old when we met him and I am sure he is no longer there.   

One November night on a full moon night in Bisbee, a friend stopped by and wanted to go for a long walk.  It was a cloudless night and after 11pm and we walked past the upper Sacremento Pit in Bisbee.  The friend asked if I had ever been down in the pit and I said no.  This was in the 1970's nobody out and about in Bisbee that late.  I knew of a spot in the rain ditch that flowed along the side of the pit that was open and we climbed into the ditch and then under the highway and we were in the pit.  We found a slope that allowed us to climb into the bottom of the smaller pit.   We walked all along the bottom of the pit until we got to the Lavender pit.  The air outside of the pit was cool since it was November but the temperature inside the pit was about 20 degrees warmer and the smell was very chemically.  The mix of mine water, pyrite  sulphur and other things made it smell otherworldly.  No sounds, no living plants and nothing we recognized as we wound our way down to the bottom of the Lavender Pit, where the dark water one saw from the lookout above was.

We stood by the water and I reached down and picked up the stone in the photo.  

The walk back out was uneventful and we went back home.

It has remained one of the most interesting hikes I have ever taken and I will never forget the otherworldly feeling I had in the pit.