Stone Gardening

I am growing vegetables, perching them on the metallic glassiness of my condominium balcony. Not too far up, but suspended. There are flowers too. Underneath the soil of each pot there are stones, rough-hewn collections of gravel, adding extraneous weight, providing drainage. Within  these few early weeks I have already harvested some salad and am watching the emergence of small shoots of life pushing up from the soil. A Sunflower in the making here, the beginnings of an herb garden there.
The strawberry plants are hardy little beings, growing broad little leaves that splay out to absorb all the light they can find. It is magical stuff this earth, water, and late afternoon sunlight that filters in to feed this small oasis of elevated life.
I will not stay here in this urban pod forever, but this season is mine. There is a stability to it. I am allowed to water and tend, there is time.
But what of the stones? They lie quietly, as if in wait in the layers below the soil and roots. Collecting and dispersing moisture. Doing their small but indispensable service, adding weight to things. Are they changing down there, protected as they are from force of the weather? Impervious or at least less prone to the elements that cause stone to be carved and worn, to turn to sand or earth? I am not sure but it troubles me a bit, because I dream that stones want to find their way to becoming earth, seed, leaf and flower. In the slow way of the turning world, far beyond my lifetime, but with an unfathomable certainty.