But today Matt and Chad (who, I think, will have put in almost as many hours as Matt on this house when all is said and done. Well, maybe not, but he's definitely pushing hard for second place so far!) moved a LOT of the limestone from our neighbors wall into tidy piles in our yard waiting for installation for the lower level window well.
I should write a bit about how this whole thing with our neighbor happened to come about. First, a little local history. Well over 100 years ago, a man immigrated from Germany to a suburb of St Paul, MN. He and his wife had a large family, and as their family grew, so did their farm. He purchased land just over 100 years ago just to the west of his farm, and eventually, two of his sons (William and Walter) purchased that land. In 1937 and 1939, these two sons built cute little white houses on their share of the property as they each were married and moved out of the tool shed. They continued to farm their small plots and take their produce to the St. Paul farmer's market. Both men had four children: a son and three daughters. Walter's son was Matt's dad (Norm). William's son (Ray) stops over often to see the progress on our house. ;) Norm and Ray put in many man-hours one summer of their high school years building a limestone wall for Ray's mom's flower garden. It runs the length of the property, and was in the past (I never saw it at its height) an incredibly beautiful sight. The limestone was salvaged from the river flats where it had been dumped during the construction of the airport (another cool bit of history.)
One of William's daughters eventually bought property next to her dad's house to build her own house. She still lives there. Eventually William and his wife died and their house was sold to our current neighbor. So he's sandwiched between people who have a LONG history on the property he now owns. Anyway, that house is seeing the effects of time, and our neighbor has not been able to find the time to keep up the garden, so he told us this spring that we could salvage whatever plant material we wanted (free landscaping around the addition!) He also at that time told us he was just fine with us using his driveway for access for the construction, which was a beautiful thing because there was no way to get access through our yard without tearing up one of our largest flower beds and possibly disrupting trees. Besides the fact that our driveway is 1) gravel and 2) steeper than our neighbors. This was in itself a surprise answer from God about the logistics of building. Recently, our neighbor also agreed to let us deconstruct the limestone wall in the garden (it's been slowly falling down for years), AND, is also willing to let us dump our excess fill into the gap where the wall was to even out the 3-4' height difference between the lower and upper front yard that was where the wall was. This is a HUGE provision for us. We've been wondering, ever since they first started digging, where in the world (well, where on our lot, since we didn't want to have to pay for trucking it to other places in the world where there is room) we were going to put all that dirt. Well, now we know. And it's actually going to be easier for our excavator to put it in our neighbor's yard than to move it to where we thought we'd try to stow it in our own yard. And that saves another flower garden. ;)
It's been really neat for Matt to be handling these rocks that his dad handled nearly 60 years ago. And we can afford the price of this landscaping rock! God has been so good to us. So many little things like this where not only are our needs supplied, but he goes above and beyond and delights to bring delight to us in the gifts he gives.
Which brings me back around to K. This is the same God who holds the hand and heart of the people who schedule court hearings in K's country.
Don't you think that K would love...
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