JENNIFER MOODY
For Mid-Valley Media
After the developers left, the property behind Lee and Sue Cutsforth's home on Northwest Ridders Lane was bare and bleak, scraped down to a hollow to provide fill dirt to lift North Pointe homes out of the flood plain.
From their back yard, the North Albany couple could see all the way to the businesses across Hickory Street â and that wasn't really the view they had in mind.
The Cutsforths gathered cones from the Douglas fir trees in her yard, watered them and kept them in Lee's mothers greenhouse until they sprouted trees big enough to plant. When the area dried out, the Cutsforths carried buckets of water to the saplings to keep them growing. They also planted flowers and spread hay to encourage deer to rest there.