The Bald and the Beautiful

The new terrace

Today was a chance to tidy up the garden, clear the garage, and do a final barbecue on the new terrace (one of this year’s projects).

So, what have we achieved this summer? First of all, we started early with the new lawn on the front side of the house. The new lawn proved to be the start of the “Big Dig” … We moved pretty much all the soil around, distributing it evenly, picking stones on the way, and finally removing the hedge (approx. 35 m long) and old trees ( approx. 6) we did not want/need anymore. The “Big Dig” ended mid-June, before we could start to plant the seeds. The seeds have become grass long time ago, and today we have a green lawn that grows like crazy. After all, Bergen is known for good “growing conditions” (a lot of rain). So, the last two months we could have mowed the lawn every week, but we opted for less than that. Don’t really see myself, or anyone else for that matter, walking around in cold rain mowing/flattening the lawn.

While we still waited for the lawn to grow substantially enough for us to walk on it, my son decided that it was time to enhance the tree house’s features. Clever as the boy is, only 6, he said he wanted to build a small bridge such that we did not have to step onto the lawn before the seeds had started to grow. So, with the help of his neighbour, and good friend, we started to build ourselves a pretty, small and very useful bridge (see image below “The tree house”).

As the small gallery shows we did, in our eyes, a remarkable job in getting the front side lawn and surroundings into a fairly good shape. A condition it has not been in since 12-13 years back. Actually before we moved into the house (10 years ago). So, you could say it took time before we finally got ourselves around to do anything at all; however, who is to say we have not had projects of this size every summer …

So, summer moved on, yet again, and we have managed to do some proper work around the house. Today was, as stated earlier, the seemingly “last chance” to enjoy the garden and to do some barbecuing before we decided to stow the grill away for the season. We invited our tenant who has been a great help this year as well, and without whom we would not see the end of the projects we started … which of course got bigger every second day as we decided to do more than initially thought was necessary … Anyways, we enjoyed the company of each other and had some laughs with the kids playing on our new lawn and in our new sandbox!

It has been a great summer after all!