Situated along one of Delano Road’s 90-degree curves, it’s easy to miss Tom Dexter’s bejeweled stonewalls.

But a close look reveals fossils, crystals and jewels cemented into the crevices of the otherwise simple granite wall lining the Marion driveway.

For Dexter, the wall and another one going up along the garage, is a combination of two hobbies.

Dexter started collecting crystals and fossils 14 years ago.

“As a kid growing up I was fascinated by dinosaurs and fossils. It wasn’t until I was an adult and had my own son who was interested that I started getting interested in collecting the fossils and crystals and all that,” he said.

An “engineer by education,” Dexter said, “I just loved the geometric shapes of the crystals. Doing anything with mathematics always interests me.”

Before he started his crystal collection, Dexter was already working with rocks of a different kind.

“I built my own house and I wanted a stone foundation, so that’s how I got started,” said Dexter. Now, 32 years later, he continues to solidify his skills and even works part-time as a stonemason.

“I kept doing more and more and more, trying to make it better and better and better,” he said.

Adding his gems to the wall, definitely makes his work more multifaceted. Dexter said it was his wife Susan’s idea.

Now, amethyst, rose quartz, emeralds, opal, garnets, geodes, obsidian and other exotic rocks glisten from the walls along with fossils such as trilobite.

When asked if sacrificing pieces from his collection was painful, Dexter said, “Yes and no. Nobody can steal them.”

Dexter assembles his walls with a method that hides the cement, but also adheres the stones indefinitely.

“I use a very hard, sticky cement mixture. If I decided I wanted to change something, I’d have to get a jackhammer. But I’ve never had a stone fall out of a wall either.”

Aside from a few larger pieces, Dexter usually sticks the precious stones into whatever spaces fit as he builds the wall. He’s also reserving some of the finer pieces in his collection for an interior wall, as yet constructed.

With a few stonemason projects on the side and the occasional addition of Victorian accents to the house (Dexter also has a degree in architecture), he reckons the walls will be an ongoing project.

“I finished the outer wall four years ago, but there are still some smaller pieces to put into it, if I ever get to it,” he said.