I lost something

We say that last year was the 10th Anniversary of the Davis Graveyard, but we are just counting the years we we are willing to admit to :)

If you go back to just me and my sister (and at times my youngest brother). We can go back a bit further.

All the way back to living in California - where we put on a haunted house at a friend's place. Check out the Davis Graveyard website for more details.

When we moved into the house we are in now. I believe a few years with nothing in the yard passed and then my sister moved up from California and we put a few store bought tombstones and a bad witch costume and mask on a stake. I believe that someone stole the plastic cauldron Halloween day. :(

Then my sister and I carved tombstones from foam with a steak knife and soldering iron the were wired to pieces of dowel staked in the ground. I remember them falling over a lot. We put a blucky hanging in the tree and some pumpkins down the driveway.

Added a few more tombstones the following year - and convinced husband to create body forms for my three witch costumes out of rebar, one straight piece and another piece bent in a U for the arms. They looked dreadful.

Then we learned to carve tombstones, similar to what we do now. We still did not paint them well, but they were an improvement. We spent many weekends in the fall carving by the outdoor fireplace as husband went off to Corvallis to watch his brother play college football. He laughed at us crazy people as he drove away.

Then the pumpkins got more elaborate and plentiful, they took a whole weekend to carve.

This went on for years until about 10 (11 now) years ago I found the plans for a FCG. I showed it to husband and asked him to build it for our shop window. He did. The response was amazing. We had people coming from all over just to see it. Husband was now hooked and ready to help.

So while he designed and built me structures and mechanical parts for all my crazy ideas. My sister and I learned to make mud men and carve foam to look like stone.

Each year we got better at making things so we replaced props and made more. We started in summer instead of fall. Although we had more help, we learned that we were in charge of all the small details, and there were a lot of them. We joked when we were planning that we had to make sure whatever we planned to do, although we had help, we, the two of us, had to be able to make it happen.

Up until last year (mostly), that was how it worked. She was my consistent partner in crime and would do anything we needed done from cleaning the patio to carving so many pumpkins, (including working on props during her vacation), helping with the events and handing out candy on Halloween. Looking back, I probably should have said "thank you" more often.

Honestly, this yard is a lot of work. It is not just something we set up on Halloween - it is now a large project, not just the props, but the whole process and the events attached to it, it can easily swallow your life.

I am living proof of that.

Last year, she had a lot going on and was not there as often. I got the feeling something was up.

So recently when we went to dinner with her and her new man, I asked (a bit jokingly) if she still wanted to be involved with the yard.

The rolling back of his eyes and look on her guys face told me what I suspected. She was done. She never said it directly.

But I am pretty sure I have lost something.