PAPA'S DRIVEWAY

When we first moved into this house our backyard where we parked was a muddy weed mixed with grass bog. Every time it rained we had to walk through or around puddles to get to the car. The kids always had dirty socks and fun playing in the puddles. And every winter was a night mare to get out of the yard.
We did not have the money to spend on fixing a drive way as there were always other needs. About ten years ago, papa decided that he wanted to fix the drive way so that we could get in and out with more ease and also escape the mud. We had no money so papa went to our local gravel yard with his truck and started bringing gravel home. They had a special pile of crushed gravel that was free if you loaded it yourself. He loaded it by shovel and unloaded and we needed many loads as we only had a half-ton and a big space to fill. Once he got the gravel here- he then unloaded it by hand and started to make our drive-way.-
It was hard work as he not only trucked in the gravel for the driveway, unloaded it but he also packed the gravel by hand. We could not afford to rent a packer. He made a special packer from his imagination that worked well so that our drive way was compact. He made the driveway wide enough for 2 vehicles plus wide path ways and brought it right to the balcony so we had no puddles to wade through.-
Because gravel settles into the mud he had to do this 3 times that summer and then the next summer he repeated the whole process twice. He was a hard worker and did all this in his spare time. He continued to add more gravel for two more summers and pack it by hand until he had the perfect driveway for our truck and car.
All his neighbors were amazed that one man would and could do all that work by hand. Every year a few weeds sneak in trying to grow in the gravel and papa would go after them with his weed killer.This year the weeds came again- not a lot but enough to annoy me and also if they are let go our drive way will become a weed garden and I was not willing to see that happen.
Today I went out and dug out all the weeds by hand-- I do not know how to operate papa's weed pump and so I simply dug them out with a meat fork so that I could also get the roots. I filled a 5 gallon pail packed with the weeds.It was a hard job kneeling on the gravel but it felt so good- I had such peace and joy to be doing something to honor papa hubby by keeping his drive way up to speed. I felt his joy of when he made the driveway.
His joy was/is my joy.

hugs from Meme