Residents of this neighborhood in Southern California have been treated to a replica of each year's Super Bowl field and Rose Bowl field since 2006.

Landscape professionals receive odd requests at times but how many have been asked to produce a carbon copy of the Super Bowl field, or the Rose Bowl field, in a client's yard.

If it ever happens to you, Geoff Thran of Altadena, Calif., has some advice.

"Be patient and be flexible because it might not work out the way you want it," he says.

Thran speaks from much experience. He has turned his front yard into a 40-foot by 20-foot reproduction of the Rose Bowl game's field every year since the 2006 contest between Texas and USC, which happened to be that year's national championship clash.

Thran followed up this sports groundskeeping effort a month later with a replica of that year's Super Bowl, complete with correct orientation of the participating teams' logos in the end zones, and has done so every year since.

In fact, Thran is a part-time groundskeeper at the Rose Bowl, along with being a full-time high school teacher. His moonlighting responsibilities include painting the end zones.

To prepare these miniature gridirons, Thran starts with a lawn of St Augustine grass. Around Veterans Day, he seeds it with rye to green it up, puts steer manure down and lets it alone for awhile before mowing it.

He paints the yard markers and uses homemade stencils to create the numerals, team names, team logos and all other insignia, which appear on the real field that year. Thran admits that the Rose Bowl has a pretty consistent look and for the last few years, so has the Super Bowl, but in the past it has presented a challenge.

"I'd call the Super Bowl venue and sometimes they would send me pictures of the field," he said.

The times he couldn't make a direct contact, he would have to wait until the media day to begin to lay it out.

He used to draw the stencils freehand until he learned, through his groundskeeper contacts, how the pros do it. So now Thran uses an overhead projector to cast each required image, which he then traces on to a sheet of plastic.

The next trick he was taught is to cut little holes around the lines, lay the plastic on the grass and spay paint it. Thran says the pros use industrial gas powered sprayers, he uses a handheld electric model and cans. Removing the plastic sheet reveals a dotted outline of the insignia. To finish the job, one just connects the dots.

But Thran acknowledges, "You have to have a steady hand because if you screw it up you have to clean it up and do it again."

The lines on the field are painted with a traffic-control striping machine.

"I string the yard out with twine and roll right over it," Thran says. "It makes pretty straight lines."

Thran estimates that it takes him five to 10 hours to make the stencils and 15 to 20 hours to transform his yard at a cost for materials of around $150. And he does it by himself.

"Even if I had help, I wouldn't want it," Thran admits. "It's something I enjoy doing by myself. It's almost like therapy."

On the days of the big games, he makes sure the fields remain hallowed ground but afterwards he and his 9-year-old daughter play on it as well as neighborhood kids.

Then he lets nature take its course and each field of dreams fades then disappears as he mows it, anticipating the next one.

So if ever faced with a client's request for something similar, follow Thran's downfield lead.

"I didn't have too high of expectations (the first time)," he states. "And it came out better than I expected."