Thursday, May 16, 2013

Why you should always be nice to your sister

Save three years or so between eighth and tenth grade, and one particularly contentious month in college (January 2001), my middle sister and I have thankfully pretty much always gotten along.  (side note: My littlest sister is eight years younger (versus two for the middle), so we never encountered the same rivalry type of issues.)  I'd like to say she felt compelled to repay all the love and guidance I've provided her the last 27 years (would be more, but can't count the above mentioned non-speaking periods) in tackling our home purchase process on our behalf.  But, in reality, she (and her new husband) are just generous people.

As I've noted in previous posts, our whole family frequently helps us out with difficulties of living overseas and during our brief stints back home - but the efforts on our house (especially on the yard) go beyond normal.

In order for the general world to appreciate the work done, enjoy the photos below. As I was putting this together, she was raking up leaves before a rain storm so that our drain doesn't clog.  And this weekend my brother in law will be spreading out new gravel on our driveway (having already spread out dirt to even it up).

Few words are necessary, given the photos.  First, the before in Feb and then in April:

Looking back towards the house and also along the side of the house:

Interim work revealed a mess hidden under brush, including a chain potentially used for taming lions:
So we called in a professional crew to do some excavation and grading:


The new state of our back yard and side of the house with the fence: 










They've also seeded the yard, but given the amount of poison ivy and other weeds pulled up (FYI: poison ivy root can still cause rashes :( ), we're not sure if it will take.  We will start with a book, but may need to call in a professional service for this summer season.

1 comment:

Beth said...

Next project: rent a metal detector, just to make sure there aren't any more surprises buried! We've had a lot of fun, actually :)