I moved this summer. And as a part of the new place to live, told the new landlord that I’d redo the garden. This involved removing all of the rock from the ground, replacing the ‘weed barrier’, and then putting the rocks back down. While all this was happening, I had to bang in a few new wooden edging panels and think about what plants I wanted to put in the flower bed.

These are the before (you can see the barrier, the overgrown, etc):

What’s funny is that when I started this process, I had a shovel and a tarp to one side. As I started working, I was by myself.

Within an hour, I had 2 children sitting on steps and watching me. Within an hour and a half this number was 4 with 3 more in and out as the work progressed. Picture me shovelling up a bunch of rocks, tossing them to the tarp and being questioned by kids over everything from what I was doing, to asking about flowers, to etc. Eventually, they asked could they help. Naturally, me being me, I sent them off to get permission from their moms, and let their mom know where / who I am and what I’m doing. They came back and suddenly I had multiple little helpers with small hand trowels, and a pair of shovels, eager to “play” in the dirt and have it be “ok”.

3 hours later, with the rocks and old weed barrier removed…the squares for the barbeque area in – and new rocks being put down by my roommate (who arrived home from work in time to laugh at my barrage of helpers):

5 hours later – everything was put back in place, and thanks to the neighborhood kids – I had a great welcome to my neighborhood. Check out the difference: