Working for Family Camp

 Paul and I had a good, cool time working up at the Sheffield's cabin doing repairs to the artificial stone in trade for Family Camp time there.  He did the skilled labor part and I did the clean up, unskilled labor part.  It was so beautiful driving up and back and while we were there in the 70 degree zone that it felt pretty good getting away from the St. George heat!  It was a lot of kneeling and bending over for Paul especially, which isn't fun, and it was "phoney" stone, which he hates, but it was good to get it done and know that it was good repair work and we would have our part of the trade out of the way.  

Fireplace gets a facelift!

Paul is in the process of giving the Vernon Worthen fireplace area a facelift.  It was put up by the Rotary Club of St. George in 1948 and must have been a wonderful place to gather and cook Dutch oven food and socialize.  Over the many years since our family has enjoyed this area too.  For several years we had our Broadbent Family Reunion at that park and met at this area specifically many times.  I came growing up and also with Paul and some of our little kids to some of those reunions.  I have fond memories of our St. George family reunion times.  Paul served on the high council and a member of the stake presidency, Reed Noble, became a good friend in the process.  He is a member of the St. George Rotary Club now and he called Paul asking for a bid to do the work to make this site good again.  The firebox had burned out, rocks were coming loose and and it had just become a very sad rendition of what it used to be.  Because of the work involved the costs have been shared with the City of St. George and the work is going forward beautifully.  A grandson, Zade, has been helping Paul some while he's out of school for summer.  I went and helped clean up and wash it some on Saturday.  It looks so nice.  It was fun to get to help out and see the great progress.  I'll put final pictures when it's all done.  One thing he has done is  to put beautiful caps on the side panels.  At one time (I never saw it working), it had some kind of water feature running down the sides, but it had fallen to pieces and it was totally unfeasible to try to remake it in that style.  Paul found some stone that matches in a pile of rock out by the airport that the city actually owned.  He cut out some new stones for the arch/keystone which had completely fallen out of the old work.  Paul has done so much stonework around St. George including historic restoration type work on the church historic sites here.  He has really left his mark in this town with his beautiful, creative stonework projects.  This is just one more chance for him to make something beautiful!  

Trying a garden - one more time!

We decided to try to have a garden - one more time.  This is a keyhole style with soil not of our own ground.  We hope having it partially shaded under the Mulberry tree will help it survive the heat and we also hope the soil that we created to fill it will also help since our soil here is not really great.  So far so good...we will have to get an awful lot of produce to anywhere begin to recoup the costs! At the moment it is doing very well; we have picked lettuce leaves twice, the plants are growing well and the seeds have sprouted.

Moccasin and Grand Canyon camp out...Brrr!

Got to stop by a job where Paul and Bean are building a fireplace for the Kaibab Paiute Tribe.  I love to see how a master can take what looks like a pile of rocks and turn it into something beautiful.  I also got to meet the little town of Moccasin which is nearby.  

We left from there to go camping out on the Kaibab close to Jacob's Lake and near the view points of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.  It was beautiful but pretty cold!  Paul is also a master at camp cooking and the food was great!  

This was a fun new discovery!

Finishing up damage control in Grandma Kurtz' back yard

A few months ago three big trees blew down at Grandma's backyard.  We got the trees all taken care of pretty quickly, but the damages to the landscape took more time with several different phases to be taken care of.  The final phase is finally done thanks to Paul and Bean's strong backs and good skills.  I came along an helped as I was needed.  It came out nicely with new drip system, weed barrier and 42 fifty pound bags of bark installed along with a butterfly bush planted.  It came out very nice and we hope it will be just right.  We were so glad to have Bean's skilled/strong help to get the job done rather than just Paul and I doing it.