Cottonwood Acres

  They say you can't go home again, and in my experience, that philosophy has held true. Returning to visit an old home is usually a disappointment, but our latest tour proved just the opposite.

  In June of 1992, we bought a house with plans to add on to it. Before we even took possession of the house, we discovered that for a variety of reasons, our plans were not going to work out...at least not where the house was located.

  So, we made the decision to move the house. We purchased five acres of open prairie, with not a tree on the lot. We paid about $7,000....I try not to think about that, given the price of land now! We hired someone to put in a basement for us, and made a deal with the house mover...we gave him the lot where the house came from, in exchange for moving it...good deal!

  By August, the house was on the new property, and we were living there. We never really moved out...the house was moved with all of our belongings inside.

I don't have a lot pictures from back then, because we gave them to someone who lived in the house after us. But the first photo shows the hole for the basement. The trees in the background are a neighbour's yard. There was not one tree on our property!

The second photo shows a flower bed,(of course) the beginnings of the garage we built, and beyond that, the trees we planted. Judging by the size of the trees, this must be a year or two after we moved there.

The last photo is when we are in the process of making a huge stream, waterfall, and pond. We already had a small pond that isn't visible in this photo. That big pond at the bottom was big enough for our kids to climb right in! At the edge of the photo, you can see a bit of a tree, so this was probably the summer of '94 or '95. We sold the house in February, 1996, and moved into Brandon....what were we thinking??

  We now live just a few miles from this house, on another acreage with very few trees, so when we saw a sign for an open house, we knew we had to check it out. The house has changed hands a few times since we owned it, and has undergone a lot of renovations. It was beautiful inside, but I was more interested in the yard. The realtor gave us the ok to take photos. 

Here we are checking out the backyard.
We planted almost every tree on this property.

No sign of  the ponds or stream,
or rock garden, and not a flower to be found.
We're used to that happening though...
Most people don't like perennials as much as we do! 

We had a big deck, but it's been replaced with a newer, and nicer one.

You can tell the soil is as sandy here as where we live now.

In over 20 years, some of the trees we planted have hardly grown!

I love the way our tree-lined driveway turned out.
You can barely see the house from the road.

And then it was time to leave.

  We've moved several times, and I've enjoyed every home we've lived in. I liked different things about each house, but I never really got attached to any them. But this yard....if ever there was a move to regret, this would be it!         
  Fortunately, I have an even better home waiting for me someday...and I'm sure that along with my mansion, God will provide a beautiful garden...and trees....lots of trees!