The Flower Bed - A Year Long Journey

Brooke tells the story:

At least this week, we got one thing done we’ve been planning to do for a long time.  We had to start planning for it at the beginning of the week.  My boss gave me permission to work 4 10 hour days so I could take Fridays off if I wanted to so this week I tried it out.  It turns out 10 hour days are very long and the traffic is much worse at 5:30 than it ever is at 3 or 4 so I’m not sure how much I’ll do it from now on but this time it gave me Friday so we could get over to Grandma and Grandpa’s house and get their flower bed done.  For those who can’t keep long stories in their heads, I’ll remind you that over a year ago we went over and ripped out the Pfitzer that had been growing in front of their porch for over 40 years.  They were big and mean and had a million roots and by the time we got them out and to the dump, we were worn out..apparently for about a year. 

Pfitzers

                Plus it took us that long to figure out what to do to replace them…Well, I don’t know if the figuring took that long because I did very little of the figuring but in the end it all came together.  We found bits and pieces here and there that made it all work and in the end, they already had some of the pieces that the garden needed.  

Last week I went up and tilled up the space and got out of a few more of the roots, leveled it out, cut the sprinkler wire again and fixed it again and did a few things.  On Friday, we went to work with a slow, small, dull chainsaw and chopped down the mushroom trees in front and dug out more of the roots. We finished cleaning up the pfitzers around the corner and dug out about 1-2 million aspens and their roots.  We trimmed and cleaned and removed.  We even took out the garbage oaks that has been growing on the corner for along time but was out of control.  All that took us most of all day and we were beat.  We took a huge trailer load to the dump and called it a day.  

Saturday we got up, did out lawns and then went shopping.  We bought a super cool willow tree and some ground cover and then began our adventure with rocks.  We eventually found American Stone where you can drive in, they load rocks into your trailer or whatever, they weigh what they load and you just pay by the pound.  We found some great gray stone and lava rocks and bought 1750 pounds of it.  They trailer kind of pulled and pushed the Infiniti all the way to Fruit Height and we got to work .  You can see it better in the pictures than I can describe it but it turned out to be very cool. Karlton and I moved rock from the trailer to the flower bed and Klarissa and Elizabeth shaped it into a river that flows around the willow.  The whole thing was made by the fountain from Mexico, the wheelbarrow that built the family house in the hollow, and don’t forget the sheepherder camp that we found in Midway.  It’s pretty great too.  It’s just a little birdhouse we found.  I have to say, I’m sore in all sort of new places and moving the gray stone was tough, but the lava rock turned out to be great to work with and it all came together nicely.  We had a great Chinese feast afterwards and everyone went home happy…except Grandpa who discovered that the sprinklers aren’t working for some reason.  That’s a mystery that we haven’t unraveled yet.  Hopefully it’s just a loose connection and will be fixed quickly without having to move a bunch of rock.  One mission accomplished. 

 After Friday's labors.

We thought there would be so many cars lined up to view we may have to charge.

 The Laborers 

Our sheepherder heritage

  TA-DAH!