Neighborhood Lawnmowers

I love where we live. Our neighborhood backs up to beautiful hills, green and covered with wildflowers in the late winter and spring, golden in the summer and fall. I love everything about our hills when they're green, but with the gold comes significant fire risk. When I first moved to this area 20+ years ago, city workers would come through and mow the hills regularly. A few years later, they started grazing cattle on the hills. The cows do a good job of keeping the grasses in check. 

This year, we had an especially wet winter and the grasses grew like crazy. We were delighted to see the ranchers dropping off a large flock of sheep, who got right to work. The sheep grazed on one hill for a few days, then the ranchers moved the fences so the sheep could chow down on the next hillside. It took about two weeks for the sheep to mow our hills. I loved walking by to see their progress. 

Neighborhood Lawnmower (affiliate link)

This page was inspired by the "All right, Mr. Demille I'm Ready for my close-up" Layout Challenge for National Scrapbook Day. There was only a single requirement: there must be a close-up photo. When I looked through my unscrapped printed photos, the only close-up I found was of this sheep. I fussy-cut around the sheep, then layered that photo over the photo of the hillside covered in sheep. I love the way the black space between the two pictures puts all the focus on that one particular neighborhood lawnmower. Another fun National Scrapbook Day challenge completed!