Seven trolls sit in a circle, each with a Towers of Hanoi puzzle.
Each puzzle has 9 disks. During the day, the trolls are frozen
like rocks. At midnight, however, they awaken, and move one disk
of their puzzle. When a troll solves his puzzle, putting all the
disks on a single tower, the troll who solved his puzzle takes
19 stones from the bowl in the center and deals them like cards
to all the trolls. If after dealing the stones all trolls have
at least 56 stones, they take a day off to celebrate.

During the celebration, which uses up a day of non puzzle-solving,
each troll returns 56 stones back to the central bowl.

This setup of the trolls is a sort of calendar. Each time a troll
solves a puzzle, it is either the spring equinox or one of 4 other
days spaced equally around the year. Every 1/5 year, one of the
trolls solves his puzzle. The days they take off to return the
stones are the leap days.

The pictures in this gallery show sketches of the arrangement of
the trolls and photographs of the trolls. So far only one troll
has been made. Pictures of others will be added as they are made.

Also, once a design is settled, the trolls will be arranged around
their own Towers of Hanoi court in the front yard, where they will
mark the passage of time for passers by.

This morning at 12:48 AM local time (would have been yesterday at 11:48PM
were it not for Daylight Saving Time) was the northward equinox. The
equinox occurs when the sun is over the equator. Consequently, the
angle the sun makes with the horizontal is the latitude of the observer.

I used this relationship to craft some tiles out of travertine to use for
the disks in the trolls' puzzles. Yesterday/today were the first time
there was an equinox available to test my math and craftsmanship. I'm
happy to report that everything looks good.

There is still a lot of work to do, but things are progressing nicely.

UPDATE:
I have decided that there will be only one troll. The troll
sits in the middle of the seven puzzles and faces the next puzzle
that will be solved. Each time a puzzle is solved, the troll
faces the next puzzle, which is one position to his right.