In the beginning...

There was "The Land".  Yup, that's right.  My husband came to me and said he wanted to purchase a piece of land.  You know...room to stretch, room for the dog to romp...room to blaze trails.  And so, he showed me this:

And this:

That's me with Champ.  Honestly,  I can't remember my exact thoughts at this time, but they centered around "mud, and more mud". And maybe, "He's losing it...should I be concerned?" See those piles of branches and such?  The land had been logged, but not necessarily the way it should.  Tree tops were everywhere, and the natural water drainage had been disturbed - hence the  "mud, and more mud".  And there was fill that had been dumped here:

Above turned out to be the future sight of our driveway.  Much of that fill was moved and used to be the fill for trails. But many trails still needed a facelift:

I kept thinking, "I don't want to burst his bubble, but I just can't see it".  I mean, give me a room with four walls and I can create the vision, plan the makeover.  But property this size - all I could envision was the green - the kind you have to work for, not the kind that grows on trees!!

That's where my husband, aka "Citylogger" came in.  He (along with indentured servants  other family members, and friends) worked for a year cleaning up the property, moving fill, and shredding tree tops and limbs to use as mulch for the trails.

So, that a year later, that same driveway that you saw earlier.....looked like this:

It's hard to believe and we still pinch ourselves.  This is our pond.  You see it as you come up the driveway. The curve up ahead is where all that fill used to be.

Gotta hand it to that "Citylogger" - he's got vision - superhero vision!  Guess it's true what they say, "Sometimes things have to look worse before they can look better."

Stay tuned.  I'll save the rest of the story for another day.