when we moved to conway springs, we bought a house five miles outside of town. we called it springgrove. it was a big old farmhouse from the turn of the century, on five acres of land. it sounds wonderful, and by the time my parents moved to missouri ten years later, it was. but when we arrived, it needed a lot of attention.
throughout the time we lived in kansas, my parents worked on that house. dad closed in the front porch, making it into a room. he built a large bedroom off the back. he closed in the screened-in back porch and we used it for a breakfast nook. we reshingled. we scraped and painted. we planted trees and lilacs and a large vegetable garden.
raleigh and i did our part in the house makeover too. when we moved to springgrove, none of us could walk outside barefoot for fear of tearing holes in our feet. glass, nails and other sharp objects covered the ground surrounding the house. i don't know how so much trash and other bits and pieces could get into the soil, but there were sharp objects every square inch of the property. raleigh and i earned our spending money the first summer in kansas, sitting on the ground and picking those bits up. we collected them in coffee cans and glass jars, and threw them away. mom and dad paid us a penny for every two pieces we collected. in kids' salary, we made a fortune.
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