The Hill- Spring 2010

As kids, my parents decided that it would be a great thing to have a cold storage room built in underneath our deck. For weeks, my brothers shoveled out the dirt and I helped to haul it to the middle of our front lawn. We eventually have space cleared out to make the cold storage room (named the "moose room" due to an overabundance of moose meat stored there from hunting season one year) and had to figure out what to do with all of the dirt. It was determined that it would become a landscaping feature. Ha!

Year after year, the hill (as we call it) would become overgrown with weeds and we would spend days trying to till it all up and get it under control again. I remember having friends in high school come over to help with yard work and again in college bringing friends home for a work party in return for free food and laundry. This year, I finally convinced my mom that we could do a complete overhaul of the hill and end the massive work parties year after year. I has taken us several weekends for a month, but we are finally done! These pictures are mostly for my siblings who live far away and haven't seen the process...

Tilled, weeded, edged, weed fabric tacked down, flower beds in, shrubs planted, bark covered, etc.

Mom weeding out the last area

We have been workign hard on the rest of the yard too!

The above pictures were taken before we finished the final steps. One of the last parts of the project was convincing my dad (who despises yard work and was out of town most of the time that Kyle, my mom, and I were redesigning the yard) to lay down concrete mowing curbs around the perimeter. We came over near the end of the concrete project so that Grant could leave his mark too!

He wasn't too happy with the project, but we think he will like it in years to come!

We feel such ownership over the new landscape (it has been a HUGE project!!) and delight whenever one of their neighbors come over to see how it is all finished. My favorite part was when their next door neighbor, Norm, came over while I was out working and asked where my parents were and why he always saw Kyle and I out doing the project! The real reason....a month's worth of work this year will mean that we are not roped into a massive weeding project for the next ten years!

Just because...I loved this picture! ;)