My eagle project was a flower garden on the new Mississippi River walk in our town.

Had to dig out the grass space, but in weed barrier surrounding it. Brought in loads of dirt (all manually dug) to mound up the garden.

Had to go to the park district green houses and go through all their leftover plants as this new garden was not planned so nothing was grown for it. I had to study all the available plants in their small state to determine how they would grow and what they would blossom (colors etc). I then had to measure and plot out how to plant all these odd combinations into a pleasant looking garden.

Then we had the worst drought in decades so watering was a several month long project as you likely won't do well at your eagle board if your garden is dead before you get there.

The only water source we had was the river. No electric source to power a pump either. So for weeks we walked down slippery moss covered concrete further and further down with the drought with 5 gallon buckets to dish out water. That was too aggressive of a pour on to the plants so my mom took a wood burner and burned holes in the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket. We placed that in inside of another bucket that didn't have holes and scooped the water with them together and then when we walked back up to the garden we pulled the outer bucket off and then held the 5 gallon bucket with the holes out in front of us (great forearm exercise) to sprinkle in the plants. Took about 90 minutes for me and my 2 brothers to water each day. Could be 4 hours if I had to go alone.

It was so well received I got a front page newspaper article and the city moved the end of summer festival to the riverfront a year earlier than originally planned as the beautification project was something they wanted to show off.

30 years later our stake YM president was planning a 100 mile bike ride along the Mississippi and my oldest son was planning to go. They solicited ideas from the stake about things to do on the trip like places to visit things to do...

This flower garden is about a mile maybe mile and a half from the John Deer Pavillion (museum) and I offered to setup a lemonade stand/lunch at my flowerbed and would talk to the boys about the project and then go over with them to the JD Pavillion.

Unfortunately that YM pres got called into YSA branch presidency and all the next up leaders were not interested in picking up all the work put in to plan the trip.

To this day my flowerbed is maintained by the city and the end of summer fest is held around that stretch of the river walk.