NATCHEZ — Instead of flowers, the flowerbeds around one house on Booker Road are filled with something else that is perhaps just as beautiful to the trained eye — rocks of all shapes and sizes.

That is because Jimmy Cotten has an unusual hobby, said his father James Cotten when The Dart landed near his house Friday evening.

“He does it because he’s out of his mind,” James said, teasingly.

Every single day, “seven days a week,” in fact, Jimmy said, he walks around along the Natchez Trace collecting rocks.

“It all started when I heard daddy talking to a woman who wanted some rocks,” Jimmy said. “Turns out, these weren’t actually the kind she wanted. She wanted some bigger ones with a flat surface so she could paint pictures on them, but I thought some of these were so interesting that I’d keep collecting them myself.”

Over the past six years, Jimmy said he would take his old tattered backpack to the Trace and fill it with rocks of different shapes and sizes, some to sell and some to keep and put in his homemade rock garden outside of his father’s house.

However, not every rock makes the cut, Jimmy said. He collects only the ones he finds interesting.

“As I’m going through them, some of them look like they have different faces on them. This one here looks like a heart,” Jimmy said, holding up a flat heart-shaped rock.”

Every so often, Jimmy said he gets lucky and finds rocks with a bit of history attached to them as well.

“Every once in a while, I find an authentic arrowhead,” Jimmy said. “I’ve found several of them over the years.”

A long pile of Jimmy’s collections make up the rock garden that completely surrounds the outside of the house, adding a touch of beauty that doesn’t need to be watered when there is a drought, Jimmy said.