Sunday, October 1, 2023

New Home- a changing path

 Life gets very busy with two young children and a full time teaching job. The kids are now 9 and 11 and we have moved into a new home. With this new home comes lots of projects. We gained a larger house, more rooms, more bathrooms, more indoor projects. But that's not all we gained land, woods, grass and gardens. So let's start with the outside, because I think we will see the most change there. 

When we first moved in everything was overgrown. The yards had not been kept up by the previous owners. They had lived here for five years and done nothing that we could see to the land (which was confirmed by the neighbors). The owners prior to them had landscaped well. They had a large tiered flower garden, a mediation garden with fountain and birdhouses, and trees along the driveway. 

Unfortunately everything was overgrown, weeds up to my hips, weeds wrapped around trees up over my head. The mediation garden had a brick path that was torn up, dead trees, birdhouses with huge holds, and no fountain, but crumbled figures. One tree along the driveway even had a huge mushrooms growing out of it. Another tree had so many weeds wrapped around it, it looked alive but was completely dead. And just to add to the fun the woods were full off poison ivy.

So with two young kids that love to play outside and explore the woods we started  with a weedwacker. 

Behind the house is an acre of woods, there seems to be a path through this that leads out to a small brook and  power lines. The path goes through the woods in the middle of the hills. The whole path is covered in Poison ivy and small trees. So weed wacking begins here and a path emerges. 

Two years later and this path now leads past a chicken coop, a sledding hill in winter, a tree house, that is in the process of being built, a beaver dam that is so big a canoe fits into the river now. Plus in the woods you will find a willow tree and some blueberry bushes. The kids have also made a fort in the woods, and my son is digging a hidey hole. 

The path also continues in a loop that passes along the power lines, pass an area we now call kid ville (more on this later) and a few newly growing Christmas trees. 

The path has changed and is a main part of our land, home and life.