By Ginny (MAD21)
I haven't been around the online world very much the last few weeks. I got involved in a project that I had originally scheduled to be just for one ten-hour day with about 20 people. It turned into six days over two and a half weeks, 320+ man-hours, and about 40-50 teens and adults.
I have an amazing mother-in-law (MIL). She is imperfect, just like the rest of us, but she has a heart of gold. She has spent most of her life serving her family and the people at our church. Aside from a few really great teens who have been able to help me out occasionally over the last seven years, she has been my only help as a parent. Pretty much any time I've needed a babysitter whether I had an appointment or just needed a few hours to regain my sanity, my MIL was, and is still, nearly always available to watch them for me. For those of you who can relate to my situation, you can understand my desire to do something to bless her.
Her yard is a haven to a ton of butterflies!My MIL has always been an avid gardener. So you can imagine what her yard has always looked like. Anywhere there could be a flowerbed, there was one, even now. The problem is that she is getting older (she's 88) and can't tend to them anymore. Over the last several years, they have all just become so overwhelmed with weeds and overgrown bushes, that there was very little "flower" in the bed. To say everything was overgrown is a gross understatement. If you live on the east coast you know that if you leave any piece of ground untended for more than a week or so, there is something growing. So you can imagine leaving it unattended for a few years!
More than two years ago I wanted to organize a day when I could get a group over to her house to get things cleaned up. But then she had some health issues and I spent more than a year driving her to all of her appointments and doing her shopping. But things have been much better for her for the last 6-8 months and she's driving (locally) again, so there has been more time to focus on other things. I decided late spring that we really, REALLY needed to get the yard worked on this year. But even I didn't realize how big that project would become. It took on a life of it's own.
I wanted to share the enormous transformation of her yard, so here are some before/after pictures:
The deer in the area had chewed these bushes around the bottom
so they looked like they all had crazy hair!
Some of the kids didn't even know there was a stone path in front of these bushes!
These pictures just don't do this flowerbed justice. Let's just say I've never seen such HUGE weeds and vines before. Most of the vine branches were as big around as my thumb, and one of the weeds at it's base was easily 6-7 inches in diameter and about eight feet tall! We reclaimed the right portion you see in the picture and planted grass seed
(it was already an inch tall in spots yesterday!).
This one is actually two large flowerbeds bookended by a Dogwood and a Cedar tree. In the middle is the tallest/biggest holly bush/tree I have ever seen. It's taller than the house!
This used to be my husband's sandbox. He actually planted that tree as a sapling that had sprouted somewhere else in the yard. Now it is an amazing and beautiful tree. The weeds and debris along with the sand and degraded roadties were all removed and the location reclaimed and covered in grass seed. Note the Cedar tree in the back ground. That was about three hours of work alone.
Cleaned up and ready for flowers in the spring.
Hey look! There's a bird bath in this one!
We trimmed everything up, added one bush, a stone path and planted a few more flowers. Amazing!
I've heard it said that you can't have a truly perfect day until you have done something for someone else that they could never repay you for. So even though we worked during the hottest time of year, with one of those work days hitting a heat index of 124, I think I can speak for my MIL and the rest of our family when I say that the people who came to help had some pretty perfect days in the last month. I don't think I have ever sweat so much in my life, but I would do it all over again just to see the light that is now shining again in my MILs face each time she looks out her window.
Each and every one of those kids and adults are covered in God's fingerprints whether they know it or not. I for one am glad they shared them with us this summer.
Fellow blogger Beki at The Rusted Chain has a really great weekly post she does every Friday called "Fingerprint Friday." We are to look around and see where we can see God's fingerprints. Is it in nature? Kids? Animals? Anywhere? Go find out where Beki saw God this week, and be sure to check out the other bloggers who linked their stories as well.