HUMBOLDT — The ponds were dug more than a dozen years ago. Saplings planted in neat rows, waiting to be landscaped.
The dreams, meanwhile, piled up, spilled over, crowded out and demanded action until Joe Works finally had the time to follow through on Walnut Creek, a 100-acre housing development on the eastern outskirts of town.
There are advantages and disadvantages to deferring dreams.
For one, they become more crystallized. And the fields, once littered with thousands of oil wells, and hedge and cedar trees have had time to heal. In their place are tall grasses, cattails and long-stemmed flowers that wave at the slightest breeze. Even the dock on the pond now needs repair.
It’s an inviting, weathered look.
On the other hand, those saplings are now trees.
“They’re not going anywhere,” Works said Wednesday afternoon as he looked at the rows of mid-sized oaks.
Works said the name for the development comes from the fact a stream runs through the property and passes through a grove of walnut trees.
“Plus, it just rolls off the tongue,” he said, very much pleased.
At the entrance off Georgia Road just east of the Humboldt Sports Complex, Works is creating a massive stone sculpture announcing Walnut Creek.
“It’s a big birthday cake,” he said jokingly of its tiered structure.
The development is platted for 30 three-acre sites and includes two ponds and a commons area in between where a spillway meanders.
Four of the lots are occupied, three with new homes and the other with a home that was moved from where the fieldhouse is.
Both the sports complex parcel, about 55 acres, and the land for the new housing development, comprise a quarter-section of land that Works purchased from fellow Humboldtian Paul Finney about 25 years ago.
Joe and Jane Works deeded the smaller parcel to the local school district for the purpose of not only building the sports complex but for new schools, if that eventually ensues. The sports complex was completed in 2013.
